Paint-a-Thon Wraps Up Its 29th Year
Bankers Show Their True Colors With Paint Buckets and Brushes
Holly Davis adorns her 1954 rambler style home with inviting flowers and yard ornaments and keeps a bowl of seashells ready to give to neighborhood children who come to visit. Despite her efforts to create a welcoming home, updating its fading blue-gray exterior was out of the question for Davis, 64, after an expensive roof replacement and a string of surgeries that resulted from a fall.
That’s when Zions Bank Loan Specialist Pauliasi Kakau nominated Davis for the company’s 29th annual Paint-a-Thon service project. Kakau, part of a Zions volunteer group for Meals on Wheels, got to know Davis while making midday meal deliveries to her house. In the spring, he surprised Davis with the news that her West Valley City home was selected for the 2019 Paint-a-Thon.
Laboring in the evenings after work, a volunteer team of 100 Zions Bank employees and family members, led by Kakau, transformed Davis’s house with a fresh green hue.
“Getting my house painted is like a blessing,” Davis says. “Talking about it, thinking about it, I get emotional knowing that people are giving so much of themselves.”
Davis’s house was one of 40 homes across Idaho and Utah that received a fresh coat of paint and a landscaping lift during Zions Bank’s Paint-a-Thon June 10-14. Throughout the week, more than 3,000 Zions Bank employees and their family members cleaned, scraped and painted homes of elderly, disabled and veteran homeowners. Zions employees also provided yard cleanup, pruning, mowing, planting and minor repairs as needed.
Along with beautifying neighborhoods, the service project aims to help homeowners take pride in their homes and maintain their independence. The average age of this year’s homeowner was 72, with an average yearly income of $21,800. Projects completed during the annual weeklong event were nominated by the public, state housing agencies, community organizations and local churches.
“We look forward to this service project every year and find enormous satisfaction in transforming the homes and yards of our elderly, veteran and disabled neighbors,” says Zions Bank President and CEO Scott Anderson. “The Paint-a-Thon embodies the bank’s dedication to the communities we serve.”
Launched in 1991, Zions Bank’s Paint-a-Thon began as a volunteer project for a dozen homes along Utah’s Wasatch Front. During the past 29 years, bank employees have set aside summer pastimes for a week each year — volunteering in the evenings after work and on Saturday — to paint 1,221 homes throughout Idaho and Utah. Not counting the dollar value of volunteer hours through the years, the bank has donated more than $1.3 million toward beautifying homes in the two states.
