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Thursday, August 20, 2009

I am a People

Yesterday was my chance to volunteer with People Working Cooperatively, a non-profit organization that helps with home repairs and weatherization for low-income, elderly people in the tri-state area.

Our assignment was to help out this gentleman, Mr. Wiggins. He lives on his own, never married, and has no surviving family members. He's also had several strokes in the past couple of years.

We were charged with cleaning out his gutters, weeding, cutting down trees that were in danger of damaging his house, and getting trees and vines off of his house and fence line. We also cut his grass for him. There were 12 of us, thank goodness, because it was a TON of work on a very hot and humid Cincinnati day.

(Front gutters before).
(Front gutters during). Yeah, that's safe...

(Gutters after).

(Front bush before).

(Front bush after). That's MFN's and my handiwork. BTW, that's MFN in the red shirt.

(Driveway before).
(Driveway before, and MFN cheesin').

(Driveway after). MFN and I are very proud, as this was our main area of concentration.

(The Group).

All in all, I'm very glad that I participated, even though it was a TON of really hard work on a really hot and humid day. Mr. Wiggins is obviously not able to care for his house on his own, as most of that stuff probably had not been touched in at least 20 years. It was nice to help him out.
We arrived at the house at around 9:20 am after our orientation at the PWC headquarters, and left a little after 1 pm. The backyard was not within our level of expertise, so we did what we could, bundled what we did, and called it a day. The front looked like a completely different house by the time we were done, though.
I'm awfully proud to be a People.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Amazing transformation of the house. Amazing girl you are, for doing that.

The world only needs about a billion more of you!

Lyndsey said...

you rock!

Cole Walter Mellon said...

You're a great People!

You made me want to volunteer...

...to get strangers to come clean my gutters.