Our SafetyWorks Week for Seniors event, brought to you by Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield, was a great success this month, with a week of hands-on on activities helping seniors across West Scranton from July 3-7. Since 2010, we have partnered with Group Mission Trips to provide free home repairs to homeowners in underserved communities through Lackawanna County. This year, around 30 different small home repair projects were completed for older adults (all clients of our Aging in Place program), with repairs including interior/exterior painting, porch repairs, yard maintenance and landscaping, and other various home repairs and improvements.

NeighborWorks has hosted Group Mission Trips volunteers for seven previous workcamps, mobilizing over 2,100 volunteers, equating to approximately 50,000 hours of volunteer labor (worth over $1.4 million) to make needed repairs to over 320 separate properties in Lackawanna County

We are especially thankful to the volunteers from Group Mission Trips for offering their time and talents to assist older adults during this week. Around 200 volunteers were mobilized from across the northern portion of the United States, with over 5,000 volunteer hours logged and around $170,000 worth of volunteer labor performed. Without their assistance, we could not achieve our goals of improving quality of life for our neighbors.

We look forward to hosting them again in summer 2024!

NeighborWorks was part of TWO "Townie" Awards during the Pennsylvania Downtown Center's Annual Revitalization Conference. Scranton City Pride 2023 won the Collaborative Partnership Award, and Wayne Evans (from our board of directors) won the Volunteer of the Year Award! Both of these nominations were submitted in partnership with Scranton Tomorrow.

Congratulations to the NeighborWorks community development team, who helped to organize this amazing conference, bringing over 200 community development professionals to Scranton from all over the Commonwealth!