The story of how a city-wide day of service was envisioned and initiated in Lakewood, Colorado in less than 1 year starts with an Idea, a Friendship and an ambitious plan to address a Perplexing Challenge! 

The Idea: In 2014 Mayor Adam Paul recruited leaders from Faith, Service Clubs and Food Service Organizations to build connections within their area of expertise then link with city leaders to build “Greater Good” Coalitions. The mayor called this, “Lakewood Linked” and the idea took off! Pastor Reg Cox built the Faith Coalition. Nonprofit leader Jane Barnes of Benefits in Action built the Coalition to End Hunger in Lakewood. Several service club leaders including Kiwanian Steve Otto built the Lakewood Service Organization Coalition. In less than 16 months Lakewood Linked was leading change in the city! 

The Friendship: By linking like-organizations together we now had a platform to build and grow a “volunteer culture.” But cultures like this are built upon friendships before they actually do things! Faith groups who had previously not spoken to one another partnered to serve neighborhood schools! Food service organizations began sharing resource information and delivery services with each other! When service clubs linked together their cumulative capacity for making a positive impact exponentially increased! Friendship, it turns out, is the foundation for grander vision, possibilities and action! Positive change in a city moves at the speed of relationship! Any fool can criticize or complain but it takes courage and humility to make friends, share vision and link arms in a spirit of common cause! 

Perplexing challenge: For generations “sustained meaningful community service” has been spotty in Lakewood. Some areas of need are addressed while others go ignored. Compassionate coalitions start with an ambitious “bang!” but soon fizzle. Good-intentioned initiatives are activated only to create more problems than they solve! How can we truly partner, listen and learn before-we-act and create sustainable organizations? Does service to neighbors-in-need “have to” rob them of dignity or the motivation to improve their lives? Fact: “Need” will never go away…but good-will, compassion and conscientious strategies of building pathways for sustainability must be constantly rebuilt, reimagined and reengineered! We need coalitions like Lakewood Linked so greater-good continues!    

With aims like “sustainable” and “meaningful service” the “Lakewood Linked Initiative” is now called; “Serve Spot Lakewood” and what began as an idea is now a movement! Serve Spot is led by Jane Barnes and is focused on building a volunteer portal that promotes service opportunities in our city. Serve Spot merged the three Lakewood Linked coalitions into one that can now focus on accomplishing the greater-good across the city with new found motivation and energy! 

Where is this leading us? October 2022 Serve Spot leaders dreamt of creating a city-wide day of service that identified and served needs that never seemed to be addressed. On September 23, 2023, less than a year later, “Love Lakewood Day” mobilized +230 volunteers to 10 different projects in the city. College students, church members, neighborhood association members…it was Lakewood’s first attempt to address the needs of the city under the leadership of Serve Spot and it was an incredible success! 

It is ambitious to envision, organize, communicate and activate hundreds of volunteers to work in 10 different service sites in a city of 155,000 in less than 1 year! Great work Serve Spot Lakewood! Lakewood Connects is proud to support this organization and the culture of volunteer “greater-good” partnership that is growing in Lakewood! We hope that this story inspires your efforts to lean into relationship building, movements of service and greater-good action where you live! Let’s do good together!