Volunteers come together to spruce up Federal Way

Published 5:03 am Thursday, July 17, 2025

Over 300 volunteers spent their Saturday morning showing their love for Federal Way on July 12 through the annual We Love Our City Serve Day.

In the 11th year of the event, volunteers helped out with a variety of projects. There were opportunities to help no matter a volunteer’s age or physical ability in the 15 different projects throughout the city.

The event brings together people from many different groups and organizations in Federal Way. One goal is “that they’ll continue to volunteer, and that they will find a place that they would love to serve again in the future,” organizer Shelley Pauls told the Mirror.

This year’s projects included cleanup and maintenance tasks at community gardens and parks, preparation for an upcoming sewing class, distributing food to unhoused community members and more.

At the Hylebos Blueberry Farm Park alone, volunteers filled two trash bins with trimmed tree limbs and cleared brush, Pauls told the Mirror.

The blueberry park was an exciting discovery for some of the volunteers who had never been to it before. Pauls said that it’s great to see people “building their awareness of what’s in their community,” through the serve day.

Volunteers also had an impact on the Light of Christ Community Garden.

“We had a great team that got our projects done very quickly. They were awesome,” Donna Cox told Pauls after the event in an email. Cox described how the volunteers “pulled and stacked all the bricks we had in the center of the garden, filled the space with wood chips, harvested blueberries, pulled spent plants, and weeded some of the beds.”

While one goal is to encourage the community to volunteer throughout the year, the serve day is special also because of the power in numbers.

“By bringing in a big team and getting a lot of work, it just brings them a sense of relief and joy to have projects caught up,” Pauls said. “We all know what it’s like to have those projects hanging over our head and our long to-do list. And when you bring in a team and in two hours, they do a blitz and get you caught up, it’s just a great, joyful feeling, and I think that that motivates me a lot as well.”

Main partners and volunteer groups included Family Life Community Church, Brooklake Community Church, The Table, Church of the Nazarene, Christ’s Church, Anthem Church, Journey and AYDEPI.

This year’s event actually got started a bit earlier than usual with a delivery of drinks and snacks to South King Fire and the Federal Way Police Department the week before on the Fourth of July weekend.

“Since you have to work a holiday and it was so hot, we just brought them early,” Pauls said.

This year also marked the first Lucky Duck Scavenger Hunt as part of the serve day. The fun took place at the Hylebos Wetlands Park and involved the hiding of many rubber ducks throughout the trail for kids to find. Some were the classic yellow ducks, but there were also many with a variety of fun colors and patterns, Pauls said.

This event also had an emphasis on reading and collecting book donations.

Other projects included volunteering at Brookdale Foundation House, a collaboration with Union Gospel Mission to distribute lunch and cold drinks to people living on the street, and clearing gutters and removing limbs off trees for elderly community members.

After volunteering all morning, all the volunteers were invited to finish up by stopping by the Federal Way Farmers Market for lunch. There was music, dancing and, most important, community.

For Pauls, she enjoyed seeing the community collaboration of all ages, “from watching the children to the adults working together and beautifying our city together is beautiful.”