More than 2,000 volunteers spend the day doing projects such as painting, cleaning, or landscaping. Other projects require greater skills and resources, such as repairing bathrooms, laying carpet, building tree boxes or wiring classrooms for Internet access.

Creating a better environment for learning is just one of the ways volunteers help local students. They also raise money to fund college scholarships administered by local tutoring and mentoring organizations, and they learn about the condition of and the people involved in the schools. That knowledge helps build support for public education.