Kaiser employees provide Mt. Scott with facility facelift

Mt. Scott Learning Center’s facility received an “extreme makeover” on January 18th, courtesy of more than 100 Kaiser Permanente employee volunteers.

Kaiser selected Mt. Scott as one of its project sites for the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service. Employee teams painted, cleaned, organized, built planter boxes, and landscaped throughout the day to provide Mt. Scott’s building and grounds with an amazing facelift.

“Most of our funds go directly toward serving students, so we don’t have a lot of resources to put back into our facility,” said Tom DeJardin, Mt. Scott’s executive director. “So for Kaiser to come out and basically take over this building and do the work they’ve done today is huge for us.”

A wonderful tribute to the staff at Mt. Scott occurred at the event. During the luncheon speeches and presentations one of the Kaiser employee volunteers in the audience was asked by a Kaiser senior director to share her connection with Mt. Scott. The woman was Mari Ellen Henson, the grandmother of one of Mt. Scott’s former students, Dylan Alcoke, who graduated two years ago.

Mari Ellen proceeded to share a very personal and emotional testimonial about how “the staff at Mt. Scott saved my grandson’s life” and helped him graduate, and that “Dylan is doing great today.”

A KGW-TV reporter (Pat Dooris) and cameraman were onsite to witness the testimonial and later interviewed Mari Ellen and Mt. Scott’s executive director. Part of that exchange was captured on the brief news clip shown below at right with the Mt. Scott segment appearing halfway in. (KATU-TV also covered the event and its news clip is shown below at left.)

Thank you Mari Ellen for sharing your heartfelt message of support for the Mt. Scott staff and the “life-saving” work they do. Special thanks to the incredible team at Kaiser Permanente for helping us help others and honoring Dr. King’s commitment to service!