27-04-2025
Hundreds of volunteers gather in Springfield for Green N Fit Neighborhood Rebuild
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (WWLP) – Hundreds of volunteers worked together Saturday morning to clean up a Springfield neighborhood.
Since 1992, Revitalize Community Development Corporation has been helping out in the Springfield area, especially at their annual event, Green N Fit Neighborhood Rebuild.
Mass. DCR awards thousands of dollars in grants to expand and protect urban forests
'We've got a great team of people working on 11 homes and one, The Miracle House behind me, which has eight men living there, it's a transitional home for them,' said Colleen Chanley-Loveless, President and CEO of Revitalize CDC. 'We're creating a garden, raised garden beds, for vegetables they won't be able to plant.'
Revitalize CDC has brought the western Mass. community together, but also volunteers from up and down the East Coast, from Maine to Florida.
'People giving back, neighbors helping neighbors, and there's so much negativity in the world and it's really nice to be able to experience this,' Chanley-Loveless said. 'It's more of an experience. It's a lot of hard work too, but it's just an experience meeting other people.'
Over 600 volunteers and 80 organizations all came together to clean up Calhoun Park and select surrounding homes.
'It's awesome, all these guys back here are also 413 guys,' said Ryan McConnell, a junior on the Springfield College football team. 'I'm from Wilbraham, and it's nice to be able to come over here, give back, but then also to be around in the summer and off-season and be able to see what we've done.'
The Springfield College football team volunteered as a part of their annual Give Back Day, helping to clean up the park, create paved walkways, and landscape, heard about the impact they will have on the community.
'I know for this house, especially, they were giving us a little rundown before, the history behind the house and all the people living in it and what it means to them and means to this community to be able to have a nice place for them to come out and really appreciate,' McConnell said.
Unfortunately, with the rain, the volunteers were not able to paint on Saturday, but they were still able to make a positive and lasting impact on the community.
WWLP-22News, an NBC affiliate, began broadcasting in March 1953 to provide local news, network, syndicated, and local programming to western Massachusetts. Watch the 22News Digital Edition weekdays at 4 p.m. on
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
