US Arabs engage in national service day

Volunteers tackle Sandy cleanup in NY, other projects across the country

DETROIT (AP) — Roughly 2,000 Arab-Americans and others in about a dozen communities across the U.S. volunteered their time Saturday as part of the National Arab American Service Day, tackling projects including boarding up and tearing down abandoned homes in Detroit and cleaning up areas hard hit by Superstorm Sandy in New York.

More than 400 people worked in Detroit’s Old Redford area planting gardens, boarding up and demolishing abandoned homes, painting murals and doing other projects. The city’s metro area has one of the largest communities of Arabs outside the Middle East.

Volunteers in New York headed to the Rockaway seashore to help deal with the damaging aftermath of the Oct. 29 storm. Volunteers posting their progress under the Twitter hashtag “arabsserve” said they found chunks of drywall and other housing materials about a mile from the nearest residential area.

“All of the projects are very unique to the areas they are from,” said Ghida Dagher, spokeswoman for the Dearborn-based National Network for Arab American Communities, the coalition of 23 Arab-American community nonprofit groups in 11 states that organized the ninth annual event. Crews teamed up with local Arab and non-Arab organizations.

Some states fielded multiple projects. Michigan also had a volunteer crew working in Flint, as did New York in its western city of Lackawanna. Florida fielded service projects in Orlando and Miami, and California in San Francisco and Anaheim.