Habitat for Humanity

On Thursday September 15, 2011 Coakley and Williams had the opportunity to spend a day volunteering with Habitat for Humanity of Washington, DC.  We took 16 volunteers total, which included corporate office employees as well as employees from our Hilton Springfield hotel.

Our wonderful volunteers (from left to right):  Top row - Steve Hahn, Lydia Allison, Marty Flaherty, Mark Williams, Vicki Caspar, Janine Davy, Richy Davy, David Melugin
Bottom row - Dawn Watkins-Welcome, Melissa Detwiler, Kirsten Reed, Deirdre Holliday, Suzanne Shogren, Christin Morgan, and Lori Loriso  (Shane Flowers not pictured)

This was such a truly wonderful experience!

We began our day by meeting at the volunteer build site at 8am.  We all signed in and stuck on our duct-tape name tags and then headed over for a brief orientation.  PK was our volunteer coordinator for the day and she was wonderful!  You would have never known that she started 1 week prior.  She was one of several AmeriCorps staff members that were working for Habitat.  She assigned us all specific jobs and then sent us over to our group leaders. 

Once we got on the actual site, we got straight to work.  Some of us were finishing the cement wall on the back of the house, some were building walls and others were literally moving gravel.  There were tons of jobs throughout the day as one job would morph into another, but regardless of a group here and a group there, I think we truly felt as if we were all working together in some sense.  We would help out with other groups where needed and in the end, we were all working toward the same cause.

The morning flew by!  We took lunch, and then got straight back to work.  We worked until 3pm and then began our clean up.  Once the clean up was complete we turned back to take a look at our work for the day.  Wow!  Spectacular.  When we arrived at the build site, we were told we were building a 2 family duplex.  We looked at it and the first floor had been framed with the floor of the 2nd floor nailed into place.  At the end of the day, you could literally see the difference we had made.  No longer could you easily see the building behind it b/c there was a huge wall of ICP and the house was becoming more of a house rather than just some wood beams linked together.  What a spectacular feeling!!

There was a great sense of accomplishment at the end of the day, and I hope that goes for everyone involved. 

Another great part of our day was that we were expecting rain, and didn't get a drop...until we got in our cars at the end of the day.  Talk about divine intervention!!  :)

I can't wait to have the opportunity of joining forces with Habitat again soon and I hope that even more of our employees have the chance of joining in on all the fun!

Take a look at some of our job tasks throughout the day:

Orientation

Working hard doesn't mean killing your knees, right Dawn?  :)

Melissa hanging off the side of the house.  "Safety 3rd" was sort of our motto for the day.

Watch out!  Dee's got a hammer!

I guess Mark thought it was an appropriate time for some pull ups.  Get back to work, sir!

Janine was a true professional with those power tools.  I think she's done this before.

Lori and Marty = teamwork! Marty knew more about this than the group leaders. He was running the show!

Dawn modeling with her tool of choice for the day.

Vicki with a power saw.  You'll notice that no one is even close to nearby.  Speaks volumes!  haha! 

Another group photo!!

Steve was sneaky.  He would not look at the camera all day.

Christin cheesing for the camera instead of doing work.  She's probably missing valuable instructions right now.

Richy enjoying his time sorting the wood by size.

Janine and Christin taking a quick photo break from overlapping rebar

I wish we had a "before" photo...b/c this is our "after".

Encloures that were added during our build day.

The inside of 1 half of the duplex

Lori and Saundra (one of our team leaders) cleaning up for the day

David waving and Mark looking like he's having trouble with some heavy equipment.  :)

Christin, Janine, and Richy modeling their work attire

Dawn wanted to model as well.

Since Steve was sneaking away from the camera all day, we were sneaky ourselves getting a photo of him during the group shot.

Honor Flight Organization

It was recently brought to my attention that our very own Melissa Geter has been volunteering her time every month to the Honor Flight WWII Veteran's Organization.

Below, Melissa explains what she does each month in her own words.  Please take a look.

"I volunteer every other month for the Honor Flight WWII Veterans.  They fly from Chicago to Dulles and I am a guardian that is assigned a Veteran and from the time they land at Dulles until they depart that evening at Dulles.  We start the day by welcoming all the WWII Veterans and then take them to our designated Bus and we head to Iwo Jima, and on the Bus we have a box lunch then to WWII Memorial where we have a Ceremony to honor each WWII Veteran and then they present colors and we all say the Pledge of Allegiance, then off to the Korean, Lincoln and the Vietnam Wall for a few hours and then the last stop is the Udvar-Hazy WWII Air and Space Museum.  Then we take them back to the gate and they are girl scouts and boy scouts thanking them for their service and then a USO Girls singing for them and dinner and we hang out until they bored their flight back home.  We exchange addresses and send them any pictures we took for the day." 

What a lovely thing to do with your time, Melissa! 

Below are a few pictures that she has provided for us from a recent volunteer day.

Miriam's September

As you should all know by now, Coakley and Williams has a monthly volunteer opportunity set up with Miriam's Kitchen in DC to serve breakfast to Miriam's homeless "guests". 

The most recent volunteer shift was last Thursday, September 8th at 6am on the dot.  Our volunteers for this month were Fatiha, Larry, and Anna from the Days Inn Connecticut Ave in DC.  Below is a wonderful image of what's it's like to be a first time volunteer at Miriam's from Larry:

"Christin, being I’m the “newbie”, I thought I would write about the awesome experience at Miriam’s Kitchen this past Thursday 9/8/2011. First, thank you for the opportunity to serve others and serving God.  For me at 5:00 a.m. on that rainy Thursday morning and not knowing where I was going I was feeling a bit anxious. I was tired, I had just finished a two day trade show for the Days Inn Alliance at the SGTP show in Crystal City VA, but felt compelled to try this new experience. I have worked at the DC Central Kitchen, as a prep person, have made egg salad sandwiches for Martha’s Table but in both of these experiences, I had never had contact with the guest.  

I finally found the church where the kitchen is located, I parked on the street not knowing that the church provided parking. As I was walking down New Hampshire Avenue in the darkness of 5:40 a.m., I still wasn’t sure where I was headed, but for some reason, I happened on the church rather quickly.  Now upon my arrival there was a gathering of what looked to be guests who were waiting for the kitchen to open.  I was certainly out of my comfort zone. Not knowing even for sure if this is my destination, why there was the gathering.  I approached one of the folks there with the crowd, in other situations I wasn’t comfortable, I didn’t feel threatened nor anxious, and oddly there was no rain falling at this time. You  remember how rainy Thursday was, 13-15 inches of rain. I asked if this is Miriam’s Kitchen and the gentleman asked if I were a volunteer, I stated yes. I said I wasn’t sure of the location and  now how to get in, in almost a chorus the gathering said to enter into the garage, the man who I was speaking to pointed to the garage door and said walk over there, he walked with me and when I arrived at the door he pointed out and pressed the garage door button that opened the garage door. Talk of your acts of kindness!

Once inside, I was shown the sign in sheet, apparel, and “wash your hands”. The staff that I worked with were very organized and my colleagues went right to duties as if these  were their  regularly scheduled tasks. I wasn’t sure who the staff and who the volunteers were, seemingly some a little grumpy. However, I introduced myself, cooked bacon, set tables, poured cereal, and had the glorious opportunity to serve the guests, 99 % with open hearts, smiles, and the grace to appreciate what someone is doing for them.

I will look forward to my next gathering at Miriam’s Kitchen and it certainly continues to cement the belief that by serving others you are serving God!"

Beautifully illustrated!  This is such a great testimony to anyone interested in serving at Miriam's.  As I shared with Larry, my first volunteer experience was similar.  The guests were so helpful as I was confused in the darkness of early morning.  What a fantastic feeling to have.  These people are truly thankful for the care given to them by Miriam's and you can see it in their act of kindness and also in their smiles, which they greet you with bright and early at 6am.

Thank you to Larry for providing his Miriam's testimony.  We hope that more of our team members have the opportunity to experience this as well.