On Saturday morning, Folsom became a citywide work site. People in matching volunteer shirts left a kickoff at Lakeside Church and spread across parks, schools, nonprofit campuses, historic landmarks, senior homes, and neighborhood streets for the 13th annual Community Service Day.
Folsom Times reported that 1,292 volunteers took part in the Sept. 19 event. The day connected many kinds of service: crews cleaned and improved parks and trails, worked on school grounds, repaired spaces used by community organizations, and helped older residents with jobs around their homes. The city’s official volunteer registration record confirms the event date and identifies it as Folsom Community Service Day 2026.
The morning began with breakfast, volunteer shirts, conversation, and a brief welcome at Lakeside Church on Oak Avenue Parkway. From there, teams headed to assignments around the city. The work was practical and varied. Some volunteers collected food for Twin Lakes Food Bank. Others painted, landscaped, repaired, or built. At the Folsom Veterans Hall, volunteers sorted donated items and packed care boxes for service members stationed away from home.
The annual food drive gave the day a long reach. Before the service morning, about 200 volunteers had spent two evenings stapling and organizing 30,000 grocery bags. Residents filled the bags with nonperishable food, and volunteers returned Saturday to collect them. Folsom Times reported that the event’s food drive has collected more than 691,000 pounds for Twin Lakes Food Bank since Community Service Day began. On Saturday, teams received and sorted the latest donations at the food bank.
Several projects were designed around care that is easy to overlook. The Neighbors Helping Seniors program sent volunteers to nearly 60 individual assignments at older residents’ homes. At the Folsom Public Library, the Rotary Annes led Girls Love Mail, with participants writing personal notes that will be distributed through cancer centers and programs to women newly diagnosed with breast cancer. Another group hand-sewed small stuffed bears for first responders to give people who need comfort during a crisis.
Schools and youth were part of the work too. Folsom Cordova Unified School District campuses hosted six projects, including landscaping, kindergarten gardens, playground improvements, and repairs. At one elementary school, volunteers planted a prepared garden. At another, they assembled bikes and toys for transitional-kindergarten and kindergarten classrooms, built a ball cart, and helped with playground and bathroom improvements.
The event also made room for projects that support the wider community. Volunteers improved a recovery center’s storage and painted its garage. At a church campus, teams worked on landscaping, outdoor gathering areas, tree trimming, parking markings, and historic stained glass. A student-led pet pantry collected food and supplies for shelters and families trying to keep pets fed.
Folsom Mayor Justin Raithel, one of the event’s founding members, joined volunteers after the kickoff. In remarks reported by Folsom Times, he thanked residents for continuing to show up for one another and described that consistency as part of the city’s small-town feel. The service day’s first twelve years brought more than 24,900 volunteers together for more than 1,130 projects.
The numbers matter because they show what a shared morning can carry. A cleaned trail, a repaired senior’s home, a box headed to a service member, a note written to a stranger, and a bag of food for a neighbor are separate acts. In Folsom, they became one citywide habit of care.
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