Today’s post comes from Anna Snoeyenbos, Manager of Corporate Engagement for HandsOn Network. She met her fiance while volunteering in Biloxi, Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina. Today, she and her fiance Andrew tell the story of how volunteering led them to each other.

 

Anna: When Hurricane Katrina hit, our nation was in shock – myself included. I couldn’t get the images of floating homes and helpless people out of my head. So with the help of my best friends in college, I organized a group of volunteers from the University of Chicago to fly down to Biloxi, Mississippi to volunteer with HandsOn during our winter break. I prepared myself for the wreckage, tragedy, mold and dust, all of which I found in abundance – what I didn’t prepare for, but what found me anyway – was true love.

 

Andrew: After Katrina in the fall of 2005, I got an email about a volunteer trip being organized to Biloxi, MS. I thought to myself, “What else am I doing during Christmas break? This could be fun.” So I went to the info session and as I walked in—bam! There sat this super cute girl. She introduced herself as Anna Snoeyenbos, and as the group leader she then launched into a briefing. I was too impressed by her combination of beauty, intelligent, and social presence to pay much attention to disaster relief logistics.

 

Anna: We had just finished a long day of gutting moldy houses along the Gulf Coast. My friends and I were tired but having fun and looking to party. Some of the older long-term volunteers at the HandsOn shelter invited us to the “hottest club” around, the “Spin Cycle” – a.k.a. the volunteer laundry house, and the only place we were allowed to drink via a technicality (no alcohol IN the volunteer center). And so a bunch of us, including this funny redhead, Drew Flowers, found ourselves drinking beers and telling stories over the rumble and thump of a half-dozen washers and dryers working overtime. Drew kept telling these crazy stories about growing up in the Deep South – which sounded as wild and foreign to me as if he were talking about hitchhiking through Mongolia. I was hooked. “He’s a keeper,” I thought – of course referring to my friend who was dating him at the time.

 

Andrew: Over the next few years, my friendship with Anna grew. After I ended my previous relationship and was preparing to leave for Nigeria for a human rights internship with Kiva, a micro-financing organization, I called her from O’Hare Airport and asked her to keep in touch over the summer.

 

Anna: And so we emailed each other long, rambling emails from opposite ends of the world. I was fascinated by his experiences in Nigeria – he was interested in my summer as a counselor at Camp Woodstock in Connecticut. Our romance blossomed as we swapped stories about the communities we were engaging with.

 

Andrew: After graduating from college, we moved to Atlanta where I took a job with the Federal Reserve Bank.

 

 

 

Anna: And I took a job with HandsOn Network. Who could have guessed that those days spent ripping down moldy sheet rock and tarping roofs along the gulf would change my life so dramatically? The truth is, you never know what will happen when you volunteer. The possibilities are endless!

 

Anna Snoeyenbos is a Manager of Corporate Engagement for HandsOn Network. She lives with her fiancé in Atlanta, Georgia. They are engaged to be married on May 19,2012 at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center (next door to Points of Light headquarters of course!)