Posts Tagged ‘Volunteer Disaster Relief’

National Volunteer Week Project Linked to Tropical Storm Irene

Thursday, April 26th, 2012

National Volunteer Week Service ProjectDid you volunteer during National Volunteer Week last week? If so, we want to thank you! National Volunteer Week was an incredible celebration of people doing extraordinary things through service. Celebrate the spirit of National Volunteer Week all year at the Points of Light webpage.

Today’s post is written by Diana O’Neill, executive director of the Long Island Volunteer Center. O’Neill’s account originally appeared on the Points of Light blog.

I am the executive director of the all-volunteer Long Island Volunteer Center, an affiliate of HandsOn Network. Volunteeringinamerica.gov continues to rank New York last in the nation, and we were named a regional volunteer center to help raise the profile of volunteerism and increase the number of volunteers in the region.

One of our National Volunteer Week service projects had all the right ingredients to create a memory marker. It was accomplished in honor of our beloved Founder and President, Joan Imhof, who we lost in December after a brief illness. Board member, Dave Okorn, who heads the Long Island Community Foundation, donated the funds to the Suffolk County United Veterans Project, which helps homeless veterans on Long Island. We refurbished the grounds of a group home and cleared debris caused by Tropical Storm Irene. The project was done in conjunction with a corporate community service initiative we support, and that Joan helped create 20 years ago, called Long Island Volunteer Enterprise. It was serendipity from start to finish – we even learned that our efforts fell neatly into the Keep America Beautiful Project!

Here is how the day in Shirley, N.Y. unfolded:

The backyard team consisted of Warren Ferry of United Methodist Church Disaster Volunteers leading the effort to clear out debris with the help of my brother-in-law who has a strong desire to help veterans. Dave brought a friend to help rake while he cut down tree limbs. In the front, were members of the corporate initiative representing Deloitte, Peoples Federal Credit Union, JMC Enterprises and MTA Transit Solutions as well as our co-sponsor, United Way of Long Island, Joan’s daughter, Meg Imhof Callinan, and her two children, Jackie and Michael, lent their support by helping to clean out and weed flower beds, plant flowers and plants, and rake the side yard of debris.

There were 17 of us doing our part to beautify the area, improve the life circumstances of homeless veterans and remember a great humanitarian who founded an organization dedicated to volunteerism – a “trifecta” of good. It was a collaborative, voluntary effort which recognized the sacrifice of our veterans and helped clean-up from the wrath of Tropical Storm Irene.

Click on the link to view more highlights from National Volunteer Week.

Click on this link to learn more about Points of Light & HandsOn Network disaster services.

Serendipity: The Way Katrina Brought People Together

Friday, August 27th, 2010

by Amanda J. Smith, Rhino Entertainment Company

"Volunteer Disaster Relief"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.

"Volunteer Disaster Relief"“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.

"Disaster Relief Volunteer"

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.