To celebrate Pride Month, Webcor Queers & Allies (aka Webcor Q&A, Webcor’s LGBTQ+ employee resource group) and the SFPUC Biosolids Digester Facilities Project (BDFP) team organized a group volunteer day in partnership with G4G: Gay For Good San Francisco in mid-June. Founded 15 years ago in the wake of California Prop 8’s passage (effectively banning same-sex marriage in California), G4G mobilizes LGBTQ+ and LGBTQ+ ally volunteers to “promote diversity, foster inclusion, and strengthen ties to the broader community.”

The partnership was initiated by Webcor Q&A and BDFP team member Lizzy Trueblood (MWH project engineer), who had volunteered with G4G several times before and was eager to connect the local nonprofit to Webcor. Since Webcor Q&A is largely composed of BDFP team members, she knew she wanted to propose an activity that would benefit the exact neighborhood the BDFP will eventually serve: Bayview-Hunters Point, a historically low-income community of color located in southeast San Francisco.

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“The BDFP team had already cleaned several parks across Bayview-Hunters Point a few times,” Lizzy says. “I knew we could make an even more substantial impact if we teamed up with G4G and got a few more volunteers involved with restoring one of the parks.”

On a sunny Saturday morning, 30 volunteers including Lizzy, Construction Manager Chase Corcorran and his daughter, Sr. Construction Manager Ryan Fischer and his daughters, Sr. Project Engineer Melanie Walker, and Project Director Lisa Thomas gathered at Heron’s Head Park to restore the city park’s habitat. For three hours, the group weeded invasive species and spread wood chips over the park’s vast garden and playground area—time that equated to an in-kind donation of nearly $3,400.

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“This event was a great opportunity to not only support both Webcor Q&A and Bayview-Hunters Point, but to help my daughter learn about LGBTQ+ allyship and community engagement,” Chase says. “I also really enjoyed learning about all the cool work Heron’s Head Park is doing for its community and getting to know my coworkers outside the office (did you know Lizzy’s grandfather wrote the screenplay for ‘Jaws’?)—even their families. Ryan Fischer’s daughters, Quinn and Norah, really helped bring my daughter out of her shy shell throughout the morning. It was so cute to see them reconnect at the BDFP camping trip a few weeks later—my daughter followed Quinn and Norah around all weekend. They treated her like a little sister!”

Lizzy agreed that contributing to BDFP’s surrounding community in a meaningful way while having fun with her coworkers were the most rewarding parts of the experience. “What more could you ask from a Saturday morning?” she says. “Getting a group of people together to make a real difference is such a gratifying experience. We completed a huge task in a relatively short amount of time through the power of teamwork!”