Oakland Gardens Branch Volunteer at Kissena Park (05/18/2025)

This is the 157th event held by AYLUS Oakland Gardens on Sunday May 18, 2025, 8:45am to 12:15pm. During the event we partnered with Alejandra Vanegas to repaint the Bocce ball court and surrounding areas in Kissena Park. Alejandra is the Senior Community Engagement Coordinator in Queens. She has worked with local community groups to renovate their park’s spaces for over 3 years. Today we work with her volunteer group, Teddy, Felix, Davis, Derek, and Adrian.

Before we began our work, Alejandra informed us on what we were working on. Alejandra taught us that Bocce has an Italian origin, being invented by the Boules family. Next Alejandra showed us how the game is played. Players have to roll balls across the court to hit the jack.

First Alejandra and Roxanna split us up into three sections based on age : High school, Middle school, and Younger. Then the high and middle school sections were further made into groups of three to four volunteers. They were handed paint brushes and rollers. Then Teddy guided the Middle school groups to two utility boxes near the bocce court and he showed them how to repaint the boxes. He first started by scraping off the old, peeling paint with a scrapper. Then he poured out some green paint into a tray and dipped and rolled a paint roller on the tray and he applied it onto the box. At the same time Alejandra showed a similar method to the high school groups painting the bocce court itself, but also demonstrated how to use paper to prevent the red and white paint from mixing. The high school groups were provided with red and white paint, to restore the original color of the bocce court. While the middle and high school groups were painting, Adrian took the third section to an area near the tree line where there was an excess amount of fallen debris. Adrian and the younger section started bagging the leaves and other debris into paper bags using rakes and hand rakes. After the Middle school section was done painting the utility boxes they moved onto painting the benches and tables surrounding the bocce court green. At the end of the event the younger section collected a total of 43 bags of debris, while the middle school and high school sections finished painting the utility boxes, benches, tables, and the bocce court.

Lastly, we would like to thank everyone for coming to today’s event. We would like to thank Alejandra, Teddy, Adrian, Felix, Davis, Derek, and Roxanna for their help during the event. We would like to thank Alejandra, Teddy, Felix, Davis, Derek, and Roxanna for helping us paint and restore the bocce court. We would like to thank every AYLUS member for coming and helping during the event. In the future we hope to continue working with Alejandra and Roxanna on more projects. Finally we would like to thank everyone for coming to restore an area for the whole community.

Our volunteers: