31st Annual Day of Caring Serves Central Minnesota [VIDEO]

ST. CLOUD -- Organizations across central Minnesota got some extra help on Thursday. Over 550 volunteers teamed up with United Way for the 31st annual Day of Caring.

Around 40 of those people helped out at the three local Catholic Charities locations. Steve Pareja is the executive director of Catholic Charities for the St. Cloud Diocese. He says the extra hands help them get a lot more work done than normal.

Maybe there's some clean up that needs to be done around the area around our various locations. Those are the kinds of things we don't normally get to with our volunteer staff, so having volunteers come in on this special day to help out with things like sweeping and cleaning windows and those sorts of things is really beneficial to us.

Volunteers at the food shelf also stocked shelves and repackaged food. Pareja says it’s overwhelming to see the community come together every year.

It's important that we keep an event like this going year in and year out because we live in this community, we're part of this community and we care for this community. Having people volunteer their time to help organizations, it just makes us a stronger community.

The 30 non-profit organizations benefitted by the event also include the St. Cloud VA, Boys and Girls Clubs of Central Minnesota, and Pathways 4 Youth.