Quests in Humanities
Rebuilding Together
This month I spent time helping repair a deck at a home in my (expanded) community with Rebuilding Together, a non-profit focused on improving the quality of life for people through improving their existing homes:
"Our Vision : A safe and healthy home for every person.
Our Mission : Together we transform the lives of low-income homeowners by improving the safety and health of their homes and revitalizing their communities. "
I was serving at the local affiliate, Rebuilding Together of the Triangle - this is their Facebook page and this is their website. It sounded like a lot of their recent projects have been focused on improving the safety of homes where more senior folks are living, putting in things like railings on decks/stairs, adding handlebars in the bathrooms and interior stairs, replacing broken windows, things like that. For course, when you go to a home with an owner who hasn't had the ability to keep it maintained as much as they'd like, you'll see about a hundred things you want to fix. But, even focusing on these few things (like handrails /bars) can make a big impact in the life of the homeowner.
Although there is something very satisfying about 1) doing something good for other people and 2) seeing concrete evidence of all that hard work (as an office job can rarely do), I also loved being out there to meet and work alongside that group of people. In fact, they have had a more lasting impression on me and my happiness than the work did. Being around them reminded me how similar and wonderful people from all income and cultural backgrounds, and various ages, can be - which is a very valuable lesson to be reminded of when I'm constantly being bombarded in social media by all the decisive political games and soundbites.
They were Everybody. The homeowner who served in the military when he was younger, later working a couple decades as a correctional officer (working with his boss/coworkers was more challenging than working with inmates, according to him); the volunteer who did contractor work on his own before, and loved it, but went to work for a larger construction company for the salary/better pay to support his new family; and the volunteer who is an avid biker, logging on average 60 miles a week. It was even satisfying to listen to the 'regulars' (mostly retired folks, staying active) at lunch. They were talk about getting together later to do last little finishing adjustments for homeowners at previous volunteer sites. Their tone of voice and way they talked about the homeowners was like that of a fatherly/motherly type neighbor. It made me really happy to see that there are good people around, who care about the wellbeing of the people around them; people committed to helping others.
Go volunteer! Everyone nowadays should be reminded of how many good, caring people are just around the corner from them. ^^
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