In his annual State of the City address, Mayor Mike Johnston set a goal that he'd have a hard time reaching on his own: that every Denverite might volunteer five hours in community service each month.
"This program, Give5 Mile High, is based on a simple idea: We all can serve, and our city is better when we do," his official speech transcript reads. "We will ask every Denverite to give five hours of their time each month to serve our city and our neighbors."
His administration isn't putting this whole responsibility on you. On Saturday, they launched their first monthly community service gathering, this time at Northeast Park Hill's Hiawatha Davis Jr. Recreation Center. The idea, Johnston told us, is to provide "structure" and gathering places for people to lend a hand.
"It's kind of the stone soup metaphor. You provide the bowl, let people bring the vegetables and the carrots and the meat, and suddenly you have an amazing meal," he said, as a battalion of do-gooders packed school supplies into 250 backpacks bound for kids who need them.
First Lady Courtney Johnston is spearheading the project.
It's an idea that she and her husband have been thinking about since before he decided to run for mayor, she said, rooted in a 2022 trip to Africa. Rwanda was one of their stops, where they learned about once-a-month community service mandated by government.
"Rwanda is markedly different looking than some of the surrounding nations. It's clean country. There is more of an authoritarian bent around it, which obviously we didn't want to have here. But I started thinking about, 'Well, what if it was purely voluntary?'" she told us. Could they really "engender this idea of everybody serves every month?"
These events are an attempt to inject that ethos into the city. This month, they're focused on backpacks. Soon, they'll direct people to clean up their neighborhoods and plant flowers. Johnston's office is planning events in each City Council district.
First Lady Johnston, a longtime prosecutor with the Denver District Attorney's office, said she knows this work won't solve problems like litter and poverty. But as they try to make dents in those larger issues, she's hoping it will help ease another, more existential, concern.
"There's been disconnection related to the pandemic; related to a loss of civility, I think, in politics; related to growing crises like homelessness and the housing crisis, youth gun violence, fentanyl, the migrant crisis," she said. "There's so many things in our community that have a tendency to pull us apart. And so I see this as an opportunity for connection."
That means better connections to your neighbors, she added, as well as to networks of service that you might stay in touch with.
"If we see a measurable number of folks that weren't previously connected and now they are, I consider that a success," she said.
The idea is to make this fun, and part of your "lexicon," Courtney Johnston added.
The city is amassing partners to help them pull this off. Comcast donated the backpack gear. Be A Good Person donated t-shirts.
Spark the Change Colorado, a nonprofit that organizes volunteers for other nonprofits, is helping gamify the experience. They'll track time for people who sign up for these monthly events, which earns them discounts on things like ice cream and haircuts from other local businesses.
Tran Nguyen-Wills, Mayor Johnston's deputy outreach director, said this is intended to do a little good for everyone.
"Everything's kind of connected in a way, with giving and giving back and supporting small businesses," she said.
Tanya Patterson, a Central Park resident who came to help on Saturday, said she loved the whole idea.
"I find it really meaningful. I used to be a psychologist at the VA, and just missed doing things, helping people. I want my kids involved in that," she told us. "We're very fortunate to live where we do, and so I just feel giving back is critical."
