Photo: Melanie Stetson Freeman | Chistian Science Monitor Staff
The Pasadena Community Job Center was established in 2000 as a place for day laborers to find work. Fast forward to today, the job center’s role in serving marginalized people made it a natural stop for donations in a surge of giving during the fires. The workers’ ability to organize and manage those items expanded the center’s sense of community service, leveraging that goodwill into support for 27,000 people. More than 10,000 people have volunteered at the center in a month and a half. Fire relief distributions continue as people try to move on with their lives after the fires; they need food, clothing, work and more. “There was just something about the organic nature of [how] it grew to support the needs of the community,” says Nathaniel Whitfield, an artist and lecturer at UCLA who volunteers to support the workers. “But it was also from the community and through the community, and it was building community.”
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