Park City resident Karen Marriott, known for her fundraising work at Peace House, is working on another kind of community-minded project — service.
Through her new group, Park City Humanitarians, Marriott has organized Serve Park City, a day of volunteering that is set for Sept. 14.
“We have more than 27 projects available for Parkites and friends to participate in,” she said. “We are hoping for at least 900 people to come out, and we are asking people to sign up now for the projects of their choice.”
Anyone can sign up for a volunteer opportunity by visiting justserve.org/serveparkcity, according to Marriott.
The list includes everything from helping set up and take down tables for the Kimball Art Center and Arts Council of Park City and Summit County’s Monster Drawing Rally to helping care for dogs with disabilities at Fetch Cares, a nonprofit dog rescue organization in Kamas.
“We already have a few hundred people signed up for these projects,” Marriott said.
Some of these groups are youths, like the Young Men’s Service League, comprising high-school boys and their moms, who are signed up to clean the S.R. 224 roadside, and another youth group is the Honors Society, who are going to do some trail maintenance and tree plantings, according to Marriott.
“The young people seem to be very excited about this,” she said.
All the projects available for Serve Park City will be marked by a logo of the iconic McPolin Barn, draped with the flag of the United States, Marriott said.
“I remember when 9/11 happened, I was home, and my husband was in New York City,” she said. “Once we left the house, I looked to the left and saw the flag on the barn and just cried.”
Liz Craig Myers, who designed the Jans Winter Welcome logo, created the Serve Park City logo, Marriott said.
“Liz is all about serving and is on our Park City Humanitarians committee,” she said. “So I asked her to come out of retirement to do our logo. “
The idea for Serve Park City came after Marriott founded Park City Humanitarians in May.
“I felt like I’ve been behind fundraising forever, so I wanted to shift things up,” she said. “So I created a little graphic about a low-key group and put it on social media and got a huge response. Park City Humanitarians don’t fundraise, but we’re committed to serve the community and connect volunteers with meaningful and needed ways to serve.”
The group meets every other month, and during those meetings, Marriott would go through all of the local nonprofits’ volunteering websites to see the different opportunities.
“I found this site called justserve.org, a volunteer app and website, and saw that some of our nonprofits were posting on it,” she said. “It is actually a website provided as a service from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but it doesn’t serve the church. It provides a free service to the world. You can go to the website and type in any country in the world and see all the different service opportunities available in the world.”
To get more acquainted with justserve.org, Marriott attended a meeting for the Wasatch Back community a few weeks ago.
“I heard about these 9/11 service projects, and I was shocked that Park City didn’t have a community day of service,” she said. “But I knew people wanted to do something because I went around and talked with people I knew and found out many of them wanted to do some service but didn’t know where to look.”
Marriott, who served on the board of Park City Community Foundation from 2016 to 2021, brainstormed and found inspiration in the foundation’s Live PC Give PC, a daylong celebration when the public can donate money to their favorite local nonprofits.
“With Live PC Give PC, we live in Park City and Give to Park City, so I thought about serving the city, and came up with Serve Park City,” she said.
The Serve Park City volunteer opportunities are all scheduled for Sept. 14, Marriott said.
“We picked Sept. 14, even though justserve.org is promoting other places who are doing 9/11 projects,” she said. “Since there are so many, they suggested we pick a day that is a week before or a week after 9/11 to get more people.”
The service projects are available at different times to accommodate people’s schedules, Marriott said.
“Another point of this is to be social,” she said. “When you donate money, you are doing great work, but you sometimes don’t feel as connected as you could be. But when you’re serving and volunteering, you do it with your neighbors and get to know the organizations you’re working with.”
Service also breaks down barriers, Marriott said.
“Everything these days is so divisive, but I noticed when we’re serving together around a good cause, we build community,” she said. “‘Building Community Through Service’ is Park City Humanitarians tagline, and that is our goal. We all love our community and that’s why we live here. And everyone can afford to serve. Also, another one of our goals is a healthy competition to beat Wasatch County, which does a 9/11 Day of Service. They usually get 800 people, and I’m sure we can get more.”
For information about Serve Park City’s Sept. 14 day of service, visit justserve.org/serveparkcity.