Terri Vish, district manager for Starbucks Coffee Company in northeast Georgia, imagines a single day on Grady’s campus where hundreds of volunteers will work to paint and renovate the school, where local big corporations will meet and talk with students and where professional football players will host sports clinics. It will be “a day of celebration to show what coming together will actually do for a school and a community,” Vish said.

Since January, Vish and other Starbucks personnel have been working with Kids & Pros, a local nonprofit organization that uses athleticism and sports clinics to promote youth character building, to organize this full day of service at Grady on April 27. The event is called “You + 2 = Project Together Grady.”

Back in 2008, Starbucks gathered 10,000 volunteers in New Orleans to conduct community-service projects to support the city after Hurricane Katrina. At the conclusion of this event, Starbucks committed itself to achieving 1 million hours of community service by 2015 and named April as its global month of service.

“Every April, like clockwork, our entire company, domestic and international, all works for a day of service throughout the month of April,” Vish said.

Project Together at Grady is one of several service projects Starbucks will be hosting around the world this April.

“When you think about doing the global month of service, you have to go in to the city of Atlanta,” Vish said. “That’s where our culture is; that’s where our heritage is, and there really isn’t a better name when you think of schools that have had longstanding tradition and heritage and culture than Grady.”

Vish said she and Starbucks committed to carrying out this project following the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., last December.

“We just felt like there needed to be some healing and assurance that our school systems are still the best place for kids to be, and as community business partners it’s our responsibility to help,” she said.

Art teacher John Brandhorst agrees a main goal should be to boost the school up in light of the recent incident at Grady involving a firearm.

“Especially in the wake of the gun incident and everything else, there needs to be some healing,” Brandhorst said. “This really needs to be that—healing, not Band-Aids.”

The idea to organize this event was introduced well before either firearm incident. At a security meeting last September, assistant principal David Propst talked with senior Student Government Association representatives, who identified several issues regarding Grady’s image and wanted to create a campaign to have students take ownership of improving the campus.

In light of this suggestion, Propst contacted Buddy Curry, executive director of Kids & Pros, who got Starbucks involved since Kids & Pros and Starbucks had already partnered that April for a service project renovating old childcare facilities in Atlanta. Then in January, Grady, APS, Starbucks and Kids & Pros representatives met to discuss Project Together.

Following this meeting, Propst gained suggestions from faculty, parents and students and created a list of the work that will be completed by hired workers and volunteers as part of Project Together. This work includes renovating the courtyard and theater, painting the campus, completing the senior project, cleaning up the restrooms and installing flat-screen televisions around school to communicate announcements. Propst said this work will cost Starbucks about $60,000.

“We want to be able to walk away with Grady just sparkling,” Vish said.

Brandhorst, however, is concerned these projects will not be completed as planned. Brandhorst has been involved with Project Together and its planning since the beginning, and with one month to go before the event, he said he still had not seen a good diagnostic profile for each of the projects.

“From their end, I want to make sure that the help that they intend is actually given as opposed to it being a PR stunt that leaves us with lots of unfinished projects,” he said.

In addition to the community-service component of Project Together, Curry said he has used his leverage with Atlanta businesses to organize activities for April 27. For younger children, there will be basketball, football and arts-and-crafts clinics, and professional athletes will be available to talk about athletic fundamentals and life lessons. For interested Grady students, representatives from local companies will be present to describe their experiences and discuss opportunities available to high school graduates.

Propst said this “executive table” will be the “best networking opportunity for seniors.”

Both Curry and Propst said a main goal for the event is to bring people together. Curry said Project Together will connect businesses with students and community members with their local public school. Propst said APS will also be involved in the effort by providing resources, such as new restroom sinks.

In order to achieve this goal, Curry emphasized the importance of volunteers.

“We hope that we have 500 to 700 volunteers and that the volunteers come together and get a real sense of community by volunteering,” Curry said. “There’s something about serving and about volunteering that brings people together, and it gives people hope. There’s strength in community.”

Curry hopes most of the volunteers will be current Grady students. He expects teachers, parents and other community members also to be a part of the effort.

“We would love to see the high school students take pride in their school and create an environment where education is important and where they go to school, how it looks, how it’s kept up is important,” Curry said. “That’s the first [goal]: to create an atmosphere of pride in the school and the community.”