ELA Sport employees Ernie Graham, front, and Jacob Rodgers, back, rip out carpet to put in new flooring at a Community Options home in Butler Township as part of the United Way Week of Caring on Friday.

As part of United Way's Week of Caring, a fresh floor was installed at a home in Meridian for people with intellectual disabilities.

Community Options, a nationwide nonprofit that provides housing and employment help for people with intellectual or developmental disabilities, first extended into Butler County in February 2016, according to Timothy Hawk, the local office's executive director.

One of the nonprofit's six homes, Hawk explained, came with a white, underused carpet when they bought it. Now that it's in daily use by the pair of young men living in it, he said, the flooring was in need of a fresh look.

There enters the United Way.

John Furman, United Way of Butler County's volunteer coordinator, said he's been looking for a volunteer group that could aid Hawk's situation.

Eventually, the Western Pennsylvania office of ELA Sport reached out looking for similar volunteer work, and United Way sent them to Community Options. The whole thing happened to fall within United Way's annual Week of Caring, Furman said, and it exemplifies the type of work done each year.

ELA Sport is best known for designing sport fields for the Seneca Valley School District. The local office was established in 2016 and is just two men: Ernie Graham and Jacob Rodgers. The pair set to work on the floor project Friday afternoon.

“United Way was always a part of our corporate culture at our other offices,” Graham said. “We wanted to continue that tradition here.”

Week of Caring

Community Options wasn't the only recipient during the Week of Caring. About 200 employees from 20 businesses volunteered their time to help nonprofit organizations as well as municipalities and Butler County do some work that would have cost a lot of money.

“It brings substantial assistance to those organizations,” Furman said. “So many nonprofits run on a limited budget. A large majority of what they have goes to the program. For them to pay for someone to do something, it's pulling money away from their programming.”Furman said companies wishing to get involved, like Graham, and organizations that need help, like Community Options, should contact him.“I can connect them with anyone in Butler County,” Furman said. “It's a one-stop shop.”This year, 160 volunteers put in about 850 hours of labor. They handled a total of 20 projects in Butler County.Week of Caring projects ranged from landscaping and painting to hosting a carnival. Beneficiaries included: Butler County Parks and Recreation, Slippery Rock Parks and Recreation, Preston Park, Victim Outreach Intervention Center (VOICe), Passavant Retirement Community, Connecting 2 Tomorrow, Glade Run Lutheran Services, Mars Home for Youth, Butler County Humane Society and Lifesteps.Companies and organizations participating were Westinghouse Electric Co., Iron Mountain, UPS, Butler Rotary P.M., C.W. Howard Insurance, Baglier Buick GMC Mazda, Mars National Bank, Northwest Savings Bank, Peoples Gas, Butler County Community College, American Glass Research, ARC of Butler County, Calumet-Penreco and AK Steel/Butlerworks.

ELA Sport employee Jacob Rodgers works on the flooring. “United Way was always a part of our corporate culture at our other offices,” said Ernie Graham. “We wanted to continue that tradition here.”