Building community through volunteering.

As a Bay Area native small business, we feel it's important to donate our time to projects that enhance our community.

If you're a non-profit, social services or public education organization, or are organizing a charitable event, let us know how we can help. We like fixing problems, but can't help unless you tell us about yours.

Civicorps Schools

Students were distracted by ambient noise, so we built them a classroom wall. For free.

Civicorps Schools is a nonprofit educational organization in Oakland, California. Its mission is to promote youth development through environmental stewardship and community service and to further education reform and social change. It is a scalable program copied by communities across the nation.

Helping out in tough times
Black Creek Builders was working on a project across the street and was approached by Joanna Lennon, the founder and executive director of Civicorps Schools.

With a distinguished career in the public and private sectors, Joanna is dedicated to community engagement and had no problem walking over to see if we were too.

The problem: ambient noise
A classroom without a wall was adjacent to the cafeteria and a central flow corridor.

Joanna was concerned because they needed to utilize that space, but loud and constant noise was not at all conducive to a proper learning environment.

Budget cuts and reduced contributions in a down economy left them no foreseeable way to build the wall they needed.

The solution: build a wall
A huge problem for Joanna was a small project for our company.

Because of the lasting impact on the kids' education this wall would have, we planned, designed and built the wall.

We co-ordinated with the school on access to avoid further disruption of the class, working on the weekends. We donated time, labor and all materials to the task.

High-impact community participation
We not only solved the school’s problem, but in collaboration with Joanna are documenting a scalable, model program for bullders to give back to their own communities by offering high-impact volunteer services.

Residential  |  Commercial  |  Community