Home Depot Donates Lawn Mowers to City's Summer Youth Employment Program
This week the Home Depot of Evanston generously donated two gas lawn mowers to the Summer Youth Employment Program’s (SYEP) Community Service Team to help with its work around town. The Community Service Team takes care of property standards around Evanston which includes alley cleanup, maintaining properties and painting the boards of boarded up buildings.
“We really love helping the community and this is a great cause,” said Julie Landrum, Store Manager of Home Depot located
at 2201 W. Oakton St. “The Home Depot is proud to be affiliated with the Summer Youth Employment Program and anything we can do to help Evanston’s largest employer of youth we are always happy to oblige.”
“The work this team provides brings down the cost the City would incur by having to contract out these same jobs,” explained Kelly Fitzpatrick, field coordinator for SYEP. “The team mows the lawn of unused properties around Evanston where the grass can be up to eight inches in height and until recently the team had to use old fashioned non-gas powered push lawnmowers to do their work.”
“The two new lawn mowers will be very helpful when cutting the grass of these properties,” Fitzpatrick added. “It will be much easier and faster to clean up the properties and the new mowers will help to beautify the city. We are very grateful to the Home Depot for this useful donation.”
The Summer Youth Employment Program offers employment for Evanston students ages 14-18 during the summer months. This year the program helped 140 students find jobs doing various jobs around Evanston including office support, community service, helping the fire and police departments and working in recreational camps such as the Ecology Center and Chandler-Newberger Center.