Volunteers improve exterior of California Legion post building

Employees of Activision Blizzard practice what they preach when it comes to supporting veterans. Nearly 50 employees left the company’s sunny Santa Monica, Calif., office building April 28 and traveled by bus to the San Gabriel Mountains community of Tujunga to spend the day painting the exterior of American Legion Post 377.

“This is immense to us,” said Post 377 Commander Paul Pangburn as he watched the outside of the post transform before his eyes. “For these people to come up here with all of these volunteers and to help us, I couldn’t ask for anything better.”

Painting the post was a coordinated effort between L.A. Works – a nonprofit volunteer center that oversees community projects in the Los Angeles area by providing onsite leadership – and Activision Blizzard, a video gaming company known for popular entertainment franchises such as Call of Duty, Candy Crush and Guitar Hero. Activision supports veterans in many ways, such as by its annual Veterans day of Service in November where employees paint, landscape and more for veterans organizations in California and the Midwest.

“I just really love community service, and the fact that our company offers us the opportunity to come together as a team to serve the community, specifically American Legion (Post 377 in) Tujunga,” said Isabella Europa, human resources coordinator for Activision. “It’s nice to be able to serve back in what little way that we can, by painting their building, to say ‘thank you.’”

The members of Post 377 are actively involved in their community, from hosting community Christmas dinners, Halloween parties and toy drives to supporting a local Boy Scout troop. “There are all kinds of small things that we do just to help everybody that we can,” Pangburn said. “The building being fixed up will help us be able to do more things for the community and veterans.”

L.A. Works Director of Corporate & Community Engagement Keisa Davis said that “the volunteers know that they are giving back an organization that gives back to the community. The volunteers are hearing their stories and knowing that what they are doing is much needed.

“Another value added for volunteers coming out to support is getting to meet their peers that they may never get to know in this way, so there is a lot of bonding happening, socializing, getting out of the office, and contributing to the volunteer goals of the organization, which is veterans specifically for Activision.”

Constructed in 1929 and chartered by World War I veterans, Post 377 is the second oldest building in Tujunga. But it’s much more than a physical building and “more than a bar” to its members. “We come, we heal here. We have conversations,” said Robert Young, first vice commander of Post 377. “I get to talk to guys like Paul, who was in the Korean War, and he’s been through it, lived a life where he knows a thing or two. So I can sit down with him, have a beer and maybe figure a couple of things out at the end of the day.”

Young emphasized that the work Activision employees put into the transformation of the post is helping veterans who “pay it forward. From Post 377 and the vets here, we appreciate it. Thank you very much.”