The picture is of Christ Doll, second from left, president of the Mandan Golden Age Club, awards a certificate of appreciation to the refinery employees (l-r) Ray Wangler, project engineer, Tim Christianson, maintenance supervisor, and Leif Peterson, director of Human Resources. This certificate is in honor of the projects they completed in 2009. Submitted photo

Each year since 1991, the Mandan Tesoro Refinery employees do a community service project the Golden Age senior citizens in this area.

Golden Age’s Outreach Workers find elderly people who are low income and need work done on their homes and the organization provides a list of those people to a couple of coordinators from the refinery.  The coordinators review the projects and determine which ones they can do, and then organize teams of volunteer refinery employees who turn out to help with the projects.

Each year over 25 percent of the refinery’s workforce volunteers for this program. They do the work on their time off, and the refinery pays for the materials, so there is no cost to the seniors. The local union which represents maintenance and operations employees also endorses and supports the work, by doing work like building and installing handrails, repairing porches and steps, doors, building and installing wheel chair ramps and other projects in need. They specialize in doing projects that increase safety and quality of life for seniors says Ray Wangler, project engineer.