A big team of volunteers descended on Melvin Avenue Elementary School in Reseda on a rainy cloud-covered day, to beautify the 61-year-old school with colorful murals and new landscaping despite the weather.

The volunteers were organized by Operation Project HOPE, a nonprofit that chooses an elementary school every year to create cheerful images on its buildings and plant trees on its campus. Paolo Paredes, chief of community relations at Operation Project HOPE, said on April 26, “We have been serving the communities of Los Angeles since 2013, beautifying one school a year to bring hope, change, and brighter futures to the elementary schools who have requested our support.”

Denise Wirth, executive director of Operation Project HOPE, said the nonprofit’s wish is that all youth have a learning environment where they can achieve their potential. Wirth said in a statement, “With the addition of positive affirmations and playground murals to the learning environment, (Operation Project HOPE) will change the world, one school child at a time.”

Among other events put on by the nonprofit, Paredes says, “We host a leadership academy every year to build up leaders for the community and those leaders pay it forward to the elementary schools each year. I volunteer and serve the kids of these schools to make even a slight change from negative to positive in their lives. That one child may cure cancer or discover how humans can light speed travel. Sounds impossible, and that’s partly the point, show the kids they can dream of making the impossible possible … starting on the ground level with murals and paintings of affirmations.”