Jackie Barnett remembers when there were more houses in her grandmother's neighborhood, near North and Greenmount avenues in Baltimore, and more residents.
"It's so sad to see those gone," she said of the all-too familiar sight of blight in Baltimore, as she dug weeds out of an overgrown garden where houses once stood.
She was one of nearly 400 volunteers with the third annual Johns Hopkins in Action, with students, employees and others coming out Saturday to help. Barnett's group picked up trash, pulled weeds, mowed, and trimmed rose bushes in her old family neighborhood, where she spent time as a child visiting her grandmother's home on 20th Street.
The homes with the boarded-up windows and sagging roofs didn't deter Barnett, who is 53 and works at the Hopkins Center for Talented Youth. Instead, she saw hope in all the volunteers around her, clearing out the small garden. Their efforts, she said, would bring something positive back to the community, and maybe encourage residents to return.
"You think it's people tearing them up but it was because there is no life there," she said. "We need to get someone in those houses and get the life back in them. I know it's getting better."
The annual volunteer day had long been planned but many were concerned it would be canceled or postponed this week after riots erupted throughout the city on Monday following the funeral for Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old African-American man who died while in police custody. The violence might have been seen as a detractor, but an organizer with Hopkins said the a number of volunteers jumped up on Friday. The group surpassed their goal and exceeded the number of volunteers last year.
Michael Mazepink, executive director of People's Homesteading Group Inc., said that while the gardens may seem like a small piece of neighborhood revitalization, they have brought residents together and pushed drug dealers out. His group has been working in the community for nearly 30 years to attract homeowners to revitalize the area, and has been partnering with Hopkins in volunteering efforts.
Many of the volunteers on Saturday said they were looking for ways to do something positive in the city.
Andy Winegrad, 28, said the opportunity will hopefully inspire more volunteering in the city where there is so much need.
"It helps people realize how much work there is to do and the opportunities out there," said Winegrad, who has lived in Baltimore on and off over the last few years, but feels close to the city he calls home.
"Hopefully we'll be able to maintain this as a constant spot of beauty," he said as he ripped up weeds from a brick path.
Nearby, Georgia Pilkington knelt over another bed of weeds. A native of the United Kingdom, she moved to Baltimore in November to be a postdoctoral fellow at Hopkins in chemical bio-molecular engineering. Pilkington said she wanted an opportunity to give back to her newly adopted city.
"I really like it. It's a really dynamic city," she said, but added that she sees a division between poorer neighborhoods and more affluent ones, and "you don't always want to be in that bubble."
When the group first arrived Saturday morning, Winegrad said they couldn't walk through the space because it was so overgrown. He pointed to a waist-high pile of discarded weeds and trimmings collected by the group that he said would become compost at Boone Street Farm, a community garden across the street, where neat rows of vegetables stood.
After the group had finished clearing weeds and overgrown grass at the lot on 21st and Boone streets, brick pathways emerged, revealing a tidy garden.
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