by Jeff Parness, Founder, The New York Says Thank You Foundation.

On 9/11, I lost my business partner and friend, Hagay Shefi.

For two years, I thought about Hagay and wondered what I could ever do to commemorate his life.

I didn’t have any good ideas until November 1 2003 when my 5-year-old son Evan told me he wanted to send his toys to kids in California who lost their homes in the wildfires.

Three days later, two friends and I drove a 17-foot U-Haul truck from New York to San Diego filled with relief supplies for the California wildfire victims.

On the side of the truck we put a big sign that said,

“NEW YORK SAYS THANK YOU”

It was my way of paying homage to Hagay, but I wanted to make a bigger statement that New Yorkers will never forget what people from small towns, and big cities, all across America did for us in our time of need.

A few months later, Evan came up to me with a serious look on his face and said,

“Dad, when Josh and I grow up, can we drive the truck if there’s a tornado in Iowa?”

That was the inspiration behind starting The New York Says Thank You Foundation.

One day of terror led to ten years of kindness.

Get Involved!  Honor the victims, survivors and heroes of 9/11 by marking the day as a National Day of Service and Remembrance. Find a volunteer project, or start your own.

by Jay S. Winuk, Co-founder, Vice President, MyGoodDeed, 9/11 National Day of Service and Remembrance, President, Winuk Communications, Inc.

Somewhere along the way, we all face tragedy in our lives. Few are spared. People handle tragedies, though, in different ways. I often marveled at but was somewhat puzzled by those who found ways to turn personal tragedy into something positive. But now I understand.

My life changed forever on that sunny September 11 morning in 2001. My brother Glenn Winuk, a partner at the large law firm Holland & Knight LLP, was murdered by the terrorists who attacked our nation by flying planes into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York. Situated just a block and a half from the site, Glenn helped evacuate his law offices, then raced toward the South Tower to participate in the rescue effort. He died when that building collapsed. Glenn’s partial remains were recovered about six months later, a borrowed medic bag by his side.

For almost 20 years Glenn was a volunteer firefighter and EMT in our home town of Jericho, NY. He had also served as a fire commissioner and as an officer of Engine Company 2, and was highly decorated. Specially certified in building collapse rescue training, no one was more prepared to race into those towering infernos than my kid brother, dead at 40.

Firefighters are a special breed. We all know that. Not everyone has what it takes to do what they choose to do for the rest of us. What struck me, always, about Glenn and any other firefighters I’ve met along the way, is their absolute passion for the job. They simply love it. Despite all the risks, all the hard work, all the uncertainly about their fate, they just love it. It’s quite extraordinary, really.

What amazes me most about firefighters, volunteer and non-volunteer alike, is that they do what they do for people they do not know. And that is indeed impressive, given the risks they face. Many of us help others, but most do so without risk to life and limb.

Glenn lived his life in service to others – not just as a firefighter, but also as an attorney and an all-around good guy. After he died, I gave a lot of thought to what I could do to most appropriately honor him.

When my friend and colleague David Paine called from California a few months after the attacks to tell me about his idea, it was as if it was scripted. “Let’s work together to make 9/11 a national day of service,” David suggested, so that people will never forget how good people of the world responded when our nation was wounded. And off we were.

Today, after more than eight years of advocacy by the organization we founded called, MyGoodDeed, 9/11 is federally designated as a National Day of Service and Remembrance. This, thanks to the hard work of many in the 9/11 community; a wealth of corporate, nonprofit and other supporters, including Points of Light Institute and HandsOn Network; and the U.S. Congress and President Barack Obama, who signed this bi-partisan legislation into law in April 2009.

Engaging in service or good deeds on the anniversary each year in honor of those who perished or rose to help is truly an extraordinary phenomenon. Millions of people from all 50 states and countries all over the world now mark September 11 in service to others, with acts small and large. The ways that people participate are countless, creative and meaningful. All who visit our web site at www.911dayofservice.org can connect with and support charitable causes in numerous ways, as well as post their own personal good deeds. There’s nothing quite like it.

And this summer, with the help of some terrific partners, we launched a one-of-a-kind free online education curriculum so that grade school students everywhere can learn the lessons of 9/11, including about how the tragedy inspired generosity and good deeds. The program helps facilitate the teachers’ and students’ own good deeds in their communities, and thousands have already signed on.

As the ninth, and then the 10^th, anniversary of 9/11 approach, I’m reminded as I am always this time of year about the millions who stepped forward to help in the face of tragedy for months after the attacks.  Not just the highly trained first responders like Glenn, but people from all walks of life, regardless of age, sex, religion, ethnicity, economic status, geographic location, political preference and other factors which frequently separate us.  Then, we were one people, and surely we can be that way more often — not just on 9/11 but throughout the year and throughout the years.

So go visit our web site at www.911dayofservice.org. Sign on to do a good deed and encourage others to do the same. Make a difference in someone’s life by turning tragedy into something positive. Thank you!

I was sentenced to death when I was 16 years old for a murder I didn’t commit.

I was on death row for five years, spending 23 hours a day in my cell.

At 16, you don’t think about fighting for your life, especially for a crime you didn’t commit.

I thought about how I would never get a chance to graduate high school.

I contemplated suicide a few times.

I prayed a lot.

I cried a lot.

And I studied a lot.

I always had a desire for education.

My lawyers sent me English, math and science books.

I received my GED, and then started college correspondence courses, all at my lawyer’s expense.

Once you accept that you are going to die, you learn to find the little things that you can enjoy in each moment.

For me, it was education.

I started helping other inmates with their cases.

I never judged people or their situations.  I just wanted to help people because someone helped me.

Some guys in prison would tell me,

“Man, you’re wasting your time. That dude doesn’t appreciate what you’re doing for him.”

But i was like,

“It’s not whether he appreciates it.  It’s about me.  I feel good helping him.”

People helping me steered my path.

Had people not helped me, I’d probably be executed or still on death row.

After my release, I worked at the Southern Center for Human Rights as a program organizer for the center’s Fairness for Prisoners’ Families program.

I want to be a trial attorney.

I do volunteer service too, at a place that provides food and clothes for homeless people.

I help feed them, and sometimes I go to Sunday night service and experience fellowship with them.

Being on death row makes you face the fact that, when we die, we all want to know that we’ve made some sort of contribution to society, however small it may be.

And your small bit of help may be large to someone else.

What’s small to us might make a world of difference to someone else.

I wouldn’t be here today if people didn’t help me.  I’m in debt not only to those people but to everyone who does that type of work.

In 1995, at the age of 16, Shareef Cousin was sentenced to death in Louisiana for a murder he didn’t commit.  Five years later, the Louisiana Supreme Court overturned his conviction because of improperly withheld evidence. Since his release, Cousin has worked with prisoner’s families at the Southern center for Human Rights in Atlanta.

This piece was originally published in Be The Change, edited by Michelle Nunn and republished here with the author’s permission.

by Jessica Kirkwood,  HandsOn Network

Are you willing to be an online ambassador for volunteerism?

Will you leverage your social networks to encourage your readers, followers and friends to memorialize the victims, survivors and heroes of the attacks of 9/11 through A National Day of Service and Remembrance?

Here are a few ways we can do it:

Using Facebook:

You can spread the word by asking your Facebook friends to get involved and to add their names to the growing list of individuals and organizations pledging to volunteer in observance of 9/11.  Share the link to the official 9/11 National Day of Service web site (http://911dayofservice.org/).  You can also lead by example.  Invite your Facebook friends to join you at a volunteer project.

Using Twitter

The hashtag for 9/11 as A National Day of Service is #911DAY.   Spread the word about the day of service by tweeting about it and sharing the link to the official 9/11 as A National Day of Service site (http://911dayofservice.org/).  You can ask your followers to volunteer – on their own or with you!  Share the details of your volunteer project with your followers. (If you mention @HandsOnNetwork, I’ll see your tweet, and retweet it or @reply.)

Using A Blog

If you’re a blogger, consider writing a post about 9/11 as a Day of Service. What you remember most about 9/11/01?  What images stand out for you? Why do you believe in honoring the victims, survivors and heroes through service? How will you take part in the Day of Service and Remembrance? (Here’s a sample 9/11 blog post: http://handsonblog.org/?p=2731)

You might want to include a call to action for your readers, such as:

–> Ask them to pledge to serve via a link to the official 9/11 Day of Service page (http://911dayofservice.org/)

–> Or, if you think folks might want to plan their own project, you can share a link to HandsOn’s guide to organizing a service project.  (http://www.handsonnetwork.org/files/resources/HON_Vol_Leader_Guide_FINAL.pdf)

If you send me a link to your blog post, I’ll link to it from http://HandsOnBlog.org.

Using YouTube:

Consider creating a video about why you think the 9/11 Day of Service is important. You coul answer the blogging questions above on video, upload it to You Tube, and share it with your social networks. If you send me a link to your video and I’ll link to it from http://HandsOnBlog.org

Related Content:

Feel free to use the official 9/11 Day of  Service Image:

You can add it to your blog or website with this HTML code:

<a href=”http://911dayofservice.org“><img src=”http://handsonblog.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/911_2010-with-words.jpg” width=”150″ height=”150″></a>

You can also embed or share either of these 9/11 Day of Service and Remembrance videos:

What to Say

Just Another Day

Finally, do something creative – whatever works for you!

For example, you could offer to do something wacky if  X number of your friends, fans or readers pledge to serve.

You could challenge your friends – “If 20 people sign up, I’ll… (insert your wacky thing)!” — Shave your head? –Perform “All the Single Ladies” on You Tube?  Only you can say…

If you’re planning your own project – try using eventbrite, meetup or VolunteerSpot to get the event organized.  If you need to raise money for your project, give Crowdrise a try.

Do you know anyone else who might like to use social media to spread the word and get others involved? Why not share this post with them?

Thanks for your using social media for social good, for helping to promote volunteerism online and for making the September 11^th National Day of Service & Remembrance a success!

Want to receive e-mail updates on how to use social media to encourage an online volunteer movement?  Let me know and I’ll add you to my list.  Contact me at Connect(at)HandsOnNetwork(dot)org.

Related Posts:

Repair The World by Leah Koenig

By Bill Goslin, Davis Vision, Ballston Lake, New York

I heard about HandsOn New Orleans from Joan and Harry Thornhill, members of our church, who volunteered in Biloxi in February 2006. Joan and Harry sent daily emails back to us describing their work and experiences. Knowing that I was a “jack of all trades” they thought I should go down and help out.

I took two weeks vacation from my job and found myself in New Orleans at the end of April. The city I found was truly devastated with blue tarps on roofs, abandoned buildings, piles of debris, hundreds of abandoned cars, flooded homes for miles and whole neighborhoods destroyed. There was much work to be done.

Photo by Ethan Bagley

Although I traveled to New Orleans by myself, I quickly made friends with the staff and other volunteers. Meeting so many folks, from all over the world, who were also there to help was very gratifying to me personally. The volunteer headquarters was simple yet functional with an air conditioned bunk room, great dinners from the church kitchen, hot showers and wireless Internet access to communicate with the folks at home.

I went on my first “house gutting” job in a middle class neighborhood of ranch homes. I was given a sledgehammer and crow bar then began to work on pulling moldy sheetrock and insulation down from ceilings. This was hard hot dirty work but when we were done the inside of the house was transformed; it reminded me of a new house under construction – bare studs waiting for new sheetrock.

I have spent many years as a volunteer fireman and asked if anyone had heard of “pike pole” a tool used by the fireman to pull down sheetrock. This tool has a long pole and would make the “gutting” work a lot easier and much quicker. No one had heard of the tool so after leaving New Orleans I found the tools and got them to New Orleans. Akron Brass Company, of Arkron Ohio, donated the first poles with just a phone call.

I had the opportunity to work on restoring a Jazz Venue in New Orleans called the “mother in law lounge” named after the hit single written by Ernie Ka-Doe in 1961. Ernie past away a few years ago and his wife, Antoinette Ka-Doe, had been running the lounge until Katrina when she was pulled from the roof of the lounge by a helicopter. We arrived one morning with a truck load of building materials and began work.

It was a pleasure to get to know Antoinette and the many members of the “New Orleans Jazz family” who stopped by to thank us for our efforts. I might mention that Miss Antoinette is a great cook and while volunteering we ate authentic new Orleans treats like poboy sandwiches, red beans and rice, jambalaya and crawfish. I look forward to someday visiting the lounge, sipping a beer and listing to some New Orleans Jazz.

I enjoyed the hard work, the fellow volunteers and the HandsOn New Orleans folks who make it all happen. I urge anyone with some spare time to volunteer with HandsOn New Orleans. The experience is life changing; helping others who are in need is very rewarding.

As Arnold would say;

“I’ll be back!”

Bill Goslin lives in Ballston Lake New York, a suburb of Albany, with his wife and two sons; Jacob (9 years old) and Simon (7 years old).  He works for a company called Davis Vision where he manages their telecommunications systems.

by Chris de Veer, former Volunteer & Director of Hands On Gulf Coast (2006 – 2008)

It’s been five years since Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast inflicting tens of billions of dollars in damages and upending the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.

The tragedy that unfolded on national television compelled hundreds of thousands of people across the US to volunteer their time, their money, and their skills to help rebuild the Gulf Coast.

I was one of those who volunteered. Katrina had struck my family. Although my immediately family lived in Virginia, my grandma, who was 83 at the time, as well as aunts, uncles, and cousins lived in and around New Orleans.

No one was injured, but my grandma and an uncle lost their houses to flooding and muck. Going to help with the recovery felt less like volunteering and more like doing what needed to be done.

I landed in Biloxi, Mississippi in mid-January 2006; my initial three-week volunteer trip turned into a two-and-a-half year experience.

The impressions and the scope of my early days volunteering still resonate starkly.

When I first arrived on a plane into Gulfport, I was picked up at the airport and we  headed back to what was affectionately called ‘Base’, or the volunteer warehouse as I also liked to think of it.

I couldn’t help but notice all the blue-tarped roofs.

They were everywhere and the blue stood in stark contrast to the brown-ish drab of winter.

Despite coming in by plane, I had no idea how far the damage stretched or how thorough some neighborhoods had been decimated.

The first neighborhood I visited was East Biloxi, home to many Vietnamese and African Americans.

The job the volunteer team needed to accomplish was to clean up the site of a former building.

I’m not even sure what was there, but from the debris it appeared to be some sort of a shop and residence.

There was little left, but the toilet had not been damaged. It sat in the open.

As we collected garbage into piles, we found items that someone might want to salvage – nail polish, statues, and a small photo album.

I don’t remember the content of the photo album, but I do remember those photos making the horror of the loss very real and very present.

We have photos to remind us of good times, to remind us of loved ones. And here those special memory triggers were, lying in a pile of garbage that would wind up in a land fill. The photos put faces to the ethereal family that had lived or worked here.

Two years before Katrina, I visited my Grandma, pulled out her photo albums, scanned in every photo, made a database, and asked her to identify everyone in every photo, estimate when the photo was taken, and describe what was going on.

Most photos had a story or triggered a memory that led to a smile.

Who knew that in two years (from August 2003 to August 2005), these scanned photos would be one of the few records of my grandma’s 59 years in her Gulf Coast home?

Who knew that a lifeless husk of a house would greet me the next time I visited.

Who knew I would lose the home where I had lived during first grade, the home where my Dad grew up, the home where my grandmother lived ever since she emigrated from Scotland to marry my granddad after World War II.

Even though my family had cleaned up a bit and tried to salvage some items from the Katrina muck, the house was still a wreck.

My grandma showed me her neighborhood.

Few people were around.

She took me to St Raphael’s, where I went to first grade, and I saw the empty halls that still bore the high-water mark of stagnant Katrina water.

She then took me to Ferrara’s, her grocery store, where I remember having the most delicious French bread.

No one had even cleaned out the meat refrigerators or touched the shelves.

The stench of rot was overpowering.

All across her neighborhood, an eerie quiet had settled.

We didn’t even need to look for traffic when we made our turns. We had the roads to ourselves.

A few weeks later, a group of volunteers went to my grandma’s to gut the place and get it ready for rebuilding.

Although it was gutted in a day, it took another two years to get any money from the Road Home Fund for rebuilding.

The Road Home was Louisiana’s program to disburse federal rebuilding funds to qualified homeowners.

In 2008 when she received her money, my grandma found another house near an uncle in Covington.

The house on Peoples Avenue in Gentilly would sit another two years before my youngest uncle would have the opportunity to begin to rebuild.

I know my grandmother was lucky compared to many other victims of Katrina.

My family was able to provide a safety net for my grandma and helped her into a new house within months of the storm’s passing.

Others on the Gulf Coast were not so lucky.

At Hands On Gulf Coast, we made a point of finding families that other organizations could not help, particularly when it came to rebuilding homes.

We sent volunteers to tutor kids in schools, to clean up parks, to work with the Boys and Girls Club, to even micro-chip pets.

There wasn’t a job our volunteers wouldn’t do.

From January 2006 through May 2008, I saw volunteers and the community slowly and steadily reweave the tapestry of Gulf Coast life.

Schools, parks, homes, businesses, restaurants, and stores all showed signs coming back to life.

I am proud of the thousands who volunteered with us.

I’m proud of the volunteers who joined AmeriCorps or became staff members at Hands On or other community nonprofits.

I hope a disaster like Katrina never happens in the region again, but I know that should it, hundreds of thousands more volunteers will come down to help with the recovery.

by Kellie Bentz, Director of Development, Bayou District Foundation;  Former Executive Director, HandsOn New Orleans

I was having dinner tonight with friends and joking about how I am still here in New Orleans almost five years after my initial visit following the storm.

I originally signed a six week contract to start a “disaster response project” in New Orleans and I find myself still living in New Orleans here.

It is true…this place sticks to you.

I remember the early days of starting this disaster response project, HandsOn New Orleans, in the wake of Katrina with my buddy and colleague, Greg.

I don’t think either of us truly knew what we were in for…and I think back and cannot believe that there were people from our national office that believed we had the capacity and ability to accomplish what we accomplished.

After six weeks, Greg had to go back to Atlanta and I looked around and there was no one else to lead the charge…so while I thought at the time my six weeks might turn into three months those six weeks turned in to three and a half years with HandsOn New Orleans.

I look back at that time and could tell you stories that only those that were there can actually believe.

I never would have imagined I would have worked with a team to build 100 bunk beds, and build out a facility that would house thousands of individuals from around the world ready, willing and wanting to “serve.”

I feel truly blessed to have had moments where I would be standing among the hundreds of volunteers and feeling chills, feeling grounded, feeling connected.

What I realized after meeting so many people who came to “Serve” was that most people were looking for a way to “connect” with other human beings in a way that was meaningful.

There are so many stories of individuals that felt their lives had truly changed after spending one week in New Orleans, one week in the bunk house, one week serving with their fellow man/woman.

Some of the most meaningful relationships in my life today came from this experience.

It is true when people say that usually the one serving gets more out of the experience than the one being served.

The entire city of New Orleans is a testament to that.

So many people have come from around the world and either come back multiple times or have decided to make New Orleans their home.

So much of my experience in New Orleans has been shaped by the people who have walked into my life or who I have been blessed to have shared moments with…one of those very special people who I will always remember is Ms. Antoinette K-doe. HandsOn volunteers helped rebuild her lounge.

She was a force….she worked alongside the volunteers everyday and at the end held an incredible party.

She was such an inspiration in my life and the lives of so many Handson volunteers.

Her funeral made me finally realize why there is a bumper sticker that says “New Orleans puts the FUN in Funeral.”

Her passing was a celebration of her life not a mourning of her death.

Antoinette is just one of the many characters so many of us have been blessed to share moments of New Orleans with.

Now, five years later, New Orleans has become a laboratory for what is possible…on the education front, on the housing front, in social innovation and on the human connection front.

Heck, I even came to appreciate what football can do to a city’s spirit!

I could not have asked for a more rewarding and formative experience.

by Jessica Kirkwood, VP, Social Media, HandsOn Network

In December of 2007,  my HandsOn Network colleagues and I traveled to Biloxi to volunteer.

While we were there, we painted the exterior of a house built for a woman whose home was flooded during hurricane Katrina. We also painted murals in a daycare center that was finally re-opening and started construction on another new home.

On our first night in town local residents came to our group dinner and told us their stories.

A man named Grady started by telling us was that he usually avoids talking about his experience of the hurricane.

Before Katrina, Grady lived with his wife and three children in a nice house near the beach in coastal, Mississippi.

He was the founder and CEO of a successful company.

He drove a nice car and lived in a comfortable home.

Grady’s elderly father, reliant upon an oxygen tank to breathe, lived in the house next door.

During the summer of 2005, Grady’s family evacuated their home five times for hurricanes.

On one of those occasions… it didn’t even rain.

On the morning of August 29th, 2005,  Grady didn’t think it looked like Katrina would hit the Gulf Coast.

He and his family decided take their chances and stay at home.

At noon that day, the situation looked increasingly dire so they drove two miles inland to Grady’s office.

They brought their boat and left it set so that if the water rose the boat would rise with it.

Well, the water rose.

Grady described the speed at which the water came pouring into his office building and the way it just kept coming and coming.

He only had one life jacket.

His six, eight and ten year old children looked at him with worry in their eyes.

When the water started to become dangerously high, Grady put his six year old in the life jacket and tied a rope around him.

Grady, his wife, his father and the other two children held on to the rope and prayed.

The family decided that if the water rose too high they would break a window up near the ceiling, climb out and swim around the building to the boat.

I’m not sure where Grady’s father’s oxygen tank fit into the plan.  Perhaps it didn’t.

The water kept rising.

The eye of the storm passed over the building.

Grady’s children began to cry

The water kept rising and rising… and then finally…finally…it stopped.

When the water receded Grady’s family had to walk the two miles back to their neighborhood and make their way over six blocks of debris, eight feet high, to find the spot where their house had been.

It took four days for Grady to find what remained of his house four blocks from where it originally stood.

With all communication cut off, Grady’s family had no way to understand the magnitude of the storm’s impact.  In other parts of the country their extended family had no way to know if they were alive.

As Grady talked, I couldn’t help thinking about how frightened he must have been during the storm. I thought about how responsible he must have felt – responsible for protecting his family, for making the choice to stay, for needing to save their lives.

I thought about the nightmares that jerk me awake in a cold sweat – the ones where something terrible has happened to my children. The ones where I can’t save them.

I thought about Grady living through this literal nightmare and it took my breath away.

After his talk, Grady told me that the thing about his experience that hurt him the most was that his children were robbed of the secure knowledge that their father was Superman.

Grady’s kids saw their father’s raw fear and it stripped them of their innocence.

More than anything else, this is what Grady wishes he could erase.

When we were in the Gulf volunteering, the physical destruction caused by the storm was no longer represented by piles of debris or the twisted remains of buildings, but rather by endless stretches of emptiness marked only by driveways and stairs leading to the ghosts of vanished front doors.

I wondered about the destruction that I couldn’t see – to the economy, to public health, to community.

Grady’s family left Biloxi and moved to his wife’s family farm in Georgia where they still live.

Though Grady commutes back and forth between the farm and the gulf coast for work, his family will not return.

They don’t even want to visit.  They will never go back.

We also heard a story about a woman who worked as a nurse in a mental health facility before the storm.

Because the patients couldn’t be evacuated, staff had to stay and work or lose their jobs.

The nurse stayed and, because she stayed, so did her husband and son.

After the storm, when she was able to finally make it back to her house, she found her husband and son drowned in the family living room.

She was found cradling the body of her son on her front porch.

She had been sitting there holding him for days because there was no one to come and collect the dead.

“So is everything rebuilt now? Is everything back to normal?”

We heard how much people in the Gulf region hate this question.

So much of was lost can never be rebuilt.

Grady told us about what he called the second storm surge, the wave of volunteers who came from all over the country and arrived well before the government with water, ice and bread.

The volunteers brought simple things like toothpaste and soap. They brought baby formula and diapers.

“They restored my faith in humanity,” he said.

I wished that I had been one of those volunteers, but on the day of hurricane Katrina I watched CNN and gave birth to my daughter.

This office trip was the first time I was able to leave her at home to come to the Gulf to volunteer.

The house we painted belonged to an elderly woman who had been living in a nursing home for nearly two and a half years after the storm.

Her house, entirely renovated by volunteers, was almost finished and she would finally be able to come home.

Everyone we met in the gulf talked about their faith that the Gulf Coast would be reborn into something greater than it was before.

Despite their experiences, they believed that the utter devastation was, itself, a catalyst for the Gulf Coast’s renewal.

They described people and communities coming together to collaborate in ways that would never have been possible before the storm.

Their enthusiasm and hope were contagious.

I found myself swept up in it, and felt part of something larger than myself.

And in so many ways, I felt so grateful.

by Amanda J. Smith, Rhino Entertainment Company

Volunteering with HandsOn New Orleans (HONO) these last few years has been a profound and humbling experience for me.

It has literally changed my view of the world, my place in it and how I relate to others. One might surmise that it’s the simple act of volunteering that did it, or the magnitude of the Katrina tragedy, but it’s more than that.

As much as we all strive to “be the change” we seek in the world, it’s hard for volunteers to put that into practice without some kind of infrastructure or support.

As new volunteers, we need good leaders, otherwise our efforts get squandered, misdirected or wasted in bureaucratic red tape. I’ve had that experience before, of spinning my wheels, and ultimately gave up in frustration.

What a waste!

In my life at least, HONO has become the catalyst that makes my volunteer efforts & energies actually productive and useful to others.

Amazingly, they have found ways to harness a world of diverse volunteers, empower us, and direct our best energies towards  tangible service. That’s one of the many reasons why HONO is so incredibly unique and why I, like so many others, find the experience so rewarding that we keep returning to volunteer with them again and again and again.

“Gutting is fun!” Actually, we all know that it is a heartbreaking job, tempered only by the cathartic relief of exhausting physical labor, and the knowledge that we are actually helping someone clear a space for their future, and dreams for a new beginning.

That’s why a big team of LA-based Rhino Records employees signed up for a project called “Miss Patricia’s Gut” on the very first day we arrived to volunteer at HONO in 2006.

None of us knew anything about the project, or Miss Patricia, we just went where HONO directed us.

As we dug into the work, our HONO project leader, shared what he knew about the project, that the house had belonged to the late Professor Longhair, a legendary New Orleans R&B/jazz pianist, and had been passed down to his daughter, Miss Patricia Byrd, who was living there with her son at the time Katrina hit.

Photo by Lindsay Shannon

Being obsessive music geeks, we knew exactly who Professor Longhair was!

Our company had actually released records & CDs by the legendary musician.

His legacy was already intertwined with our own lives through both music and the business of selling music.

Being sent to work on his family home was a random assignment, but we felt an instant personal connection through the shared love of music.

Someone with a BlackBerry sent an email to our co-workers back in LA, and within hours, the whole Rhino company felt connected to the project and Miss Patricia as well.

That afternoon, Miss Patricia & her young son stopped by the house to meet us in person.

Someone had told her we were from Rhino – she had received royalty checks from our company over the years and was touched by the synchronicity of our volunteer involvement.

She told us stories about her father, growing up in this home with him, and that “he could make a piano walk.”

She shared the harrowing stories of her own experiences during the storm and evacuation to the Convention Center.

In the process of gutting her house, we had carefully salvaged several Professor Longhair posters, which Miss Patricia graciously gave to us to keep and display in Rhino’s corporate offices when we left.

It’s hard to explain the richness of these interactions in words, and how bearing witness to someone else’s tragedy can feel like an honor, but it does.

It’s our shared humanity and our connection to each other at this most basic level that allows us to really open up & be there for each other.

It’s why HONO works so well, and why we all keep coming back.

by Erika Putinsky

It is difficult to believe we are rapidly approaching the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

As we relive the stories of the hurricane through media retrospectives that are sure to come this week, I am hopeful that we also remember the lessons learned while rebuilding the infrastructure, unmasking issues of disparity that have existed for hundreds of years, and supporting survivors as they create their new normal on the Gulf Coast.

This is our chance to truly, respectfully, and actively remember the loss, triumph, and continued need of the people of the Gulf Coast region.

During my efforts with HandsOn Network on the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina, I had the opportunity to live and work in a place where our nation truly came together as a unified community.

While I was in the disaster zone after Hurricane Katrina I was unsettled and amazed every minute of the day.

At no moment was it possible to escape bizarre sites like a delicate vase balanced atop a house that had been reduced to kindling, juxtaposed against the most beautiful sunset I had ever seen.

These unavoidable ironies hinted that Hurricane Katrina would continue to challenge us with unbelievable sadness and pure beauty for many years to come.

Once the images of the despair and the stories of the survivors reached our world, people began to act.

It seems one of the most profound parts of the recovery was that we all got out from behind our veil of comfort and did what we could to help.

During that time, we were reminded the power of putting thoughts to task.

In Mississippi I met a 90 year old woman that drove 15 hours to volunteer because the hurricane gave her a reason to “still be on earth”.

She said she was a “real good cook” and explained nothing would help the survivors and volunteers feel better than a hot meal.

I saw residents that had lost everything riding dilapidated bicycles through debris filled streets while singing and wearing superhero costumes. They said they just wanted to create some happiness in the midst of the destruction.

After the hurricane so many people remembered the power in showing up, being willing to help with a hammer to rebuild a home, or offer a hug to rebuild a life.

We are a world of heroes- we show up in times of great need and have the opportunity to live that heroism through continued action.

Now it is time to dust off our superhero capes, folks.

Let the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina be a catalyst to remind the world to reflect on what can be with their minds, act on what should be with their hands, and continue to craft what will be with their efforts.

There are issues in every nation across the globe that we can solve with our ingenuity.

The Gulf Coast region still needs our help.

Perhaps, keep it local and volunteer at a nonprofit in your city.

You might even walk across the street and introduce yourself to a neighbor.

Show up, put your good thoughts to task and unleash your inner superhero!