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A Beautiful Day in San Jose

May 24, 2011 By
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In the midst of the darkness of San Jose’s fiscal state of emergency as declared by Mayor Chuck Reed, a bright day dawned last week for more than a dozen neighborhoods and thousands of the city’s residents thanks to a coalition of public, private, nonprofit and faith-based interests.

Approximately 2,400 volunteers from the coalition Beautiful Day went to work from May 16-22 doing everything from donating blood to hosting a prom for disabled youth, to fixing up schools and dozens of homes throughout the city.
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Honoring Our Volunteers: A Commitment to Rebuilding

April 15, 2011 By
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We’re finishing our time of highlighting volunteers for National Volunteer Week with a recent story about some people from a Pacifica, CA., church who have made the commitment to travel to New Orleans every winter to help rebuild homes damaged by Hurricane Katrina. Many of the people in this group have been traveling to New Orleans for several years now. They give up their vacations to volunteer their time getting dusty and dirty to help raise up another family. They are another example of the millions of volunteers who make a huge difference in communities all over the world. Thank you Volunteers! MORE

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Honoring Our Volunteers: Holiday Parties for the Homeless

April 14, 2011 By
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Today for National Volunteer Week we’re featuring a story about volunteers who make holiday parties possible for homeless people every year in San Jose, CA. This story is about  the Christmas party that they held last December, but I know they are gearing up for an Easter party soon. The volunteers from The River Church prepare the meal, shuttle people to and from the homeless shelter, share the meal with the men and women, and sing songs together. MORE

 

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Honoring Our Volunteers: EPA Homeless Connect

April 13, 2011 By
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As we continue with celebrating National Volunteer Week, today we feature a story about how one community comes together to help give hope to homeless people. Although the Homeless Connect event in East Palo Alto is organized through a partnership of nonprofit and governmental agencies, the annual event could never happen without the hard work from dozens of volunteers. Thanks to them, homeless men and women during these events get showers, haircuts, foot care, bicycle repair, legal advice, housing leads, and a hot meal. MORE

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Honoring Our Volunteers: Day Camp for Refugee Students

April 12, 2011 By
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Continuing our theme of thanking volunteers during National Volunteer Week, today we feature a story about a summer day camp for refugee children and teens. The idea for the day camp was conceived of and brought to life by a volunteer. Dozens of volunteers made the week-long camp a reality. The week was a resounding success, and the good news I just learned today is that the camp is being repeated this summer. MORE

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Rebuilding New Orleans: From Homes to Entire Neighborhoods

March 25, 2011 By
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Editor’s Note: All week long I’ve posted stories about people and organizations that are helping to rebuild New Orleans. Posts on Monday and Tuesday looked at a California church that sends a work group to the city every winter. Wednesday was about a family that takes the trips every year. Yesterday I started a story about Project Homecoming. Today is part two of the story.

NEW ORLEANS –  Project Homecoming was born in 2007 after it became apparent that many homeowners whose homes were destroyed after Hurricane Katrian were struggling to rebuild. Elderly, disabled and the poor were especially at a disadvantage. Many had received monies to rebuild from insurance or the government, only to have those funds stolen by unscrupulous contractors.

A volunteer from California works on a the North Rampart house being rebuilt by Project Homecoming.

A number of churches in the Presbytery of South Louisiana, along with the national Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, partnered together to create Project Homecoming to help those homeowners who were disadvantaged. Since that time the group has utilized nearly 10,000 volunteers from around the country to rebuild more than 125 homes.

Now five and a half years since Katrina, the organization is re-gauging its focus, to include not only helping individual homeowners, but also entire neighborhoods.

In the fall of last year, the organization started construction on its first house without a homeowner. The more than 120-year-old house on North Rampart Street in the Lower Ninth Ward was donated by an overwhelmed owner who had inherited the property – along with blight liens, taxes, and looming construction costs.

“It was in worse than zero shape,” said Construction Manager Noelle Marinello. Twelve feet of water invaded the house when the levees broke after Katrina; a large hole in the roof from wind damage had let in five years of rain, wind, and pests.

The home on North Rampart Street that Project Homecoming is rebuilding with the help of volunteers.

Teams of volunteers have rotated in every week to clear out the once overgrown lot and completely rebuild the classic New Orleans shotgun house structure.

Public Relations and Marketing Director Vann Joines said the home will be priced to make it accessible for a low-income family, without negatively affecting home prices in the surrounding neighborhood. Low-income is defined as making 80 percent or less of the area’s median income. One report puts the city’s median income for a family of four at $66,000 a year.

The North Rampart Street house is in essence a test case for Project Homecoming, as it prepares to tackle rebuilding efforts through a city grant of $500,000 the group was awarded. The organization will be using the money to purchase 13 lots from the state, which acquired the properties in a buy-out program after the disaster. Officials plan to build 11 new homes and rehabilitate two existing homes over the next two years.

The 3-bedroom, 2-bath 1,200-square-foot homes will be energy efficient using green building materials, Joines said. The houses will be raised high enough to escape future flooding, and be able to withstand hurricane-force winds. And Project Homecoming will work with neighborhood associations to ensure that each home fits the architectural character of the community.

Each home is expected to cost between $190,000 and $200,000 to build, but will be sold for approximately $150,000. Project Homecoming officials, working in partnership with other nonprofits, will help low-income homebuyers secure mortgages of between $85,000 and $90,000, as well as “soft second” grants to cover the remaining cost.

Qualified homebuyers will also be counseled and trained in how to save money and manage finances so they can meet future mortgage, tax and maintenance responsibilities.

Executive Director Jean Marie Peacock said other “holistic” efforts to help neighborhoods Project Homecoming is undertaking include partnering with neighborhood associations and other agencies to build community gardens, clear lots, and identify blighted properties for future rehabilitation. They are working with one school to teach students about urban farming.

As volunteers preparing for a new week of work were told recently by Operations Director Kevin Krejci: “We are here for the long term to make sure that community-wide recovery happens.”

For more information about Project Homecoming and how to help, go to http://projecthomecoming.net. Or call the toll free number: (877) 942-0444.

Next: One man’s story of survival.

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Project Homecoming Commits to Long-term Rebuilding of New Orleans

March 24, 2011 By
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Editor’s Note: This week I’m sharing stories about people and organizations who have helped New Orleans rebuild since Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005. Monday and Tuesday we looked at a California church that sends a group of volunteers every winter. Wednesday we saw a family from that church that spends their vacation on the annual trips. Today’s post is about the organization that the church group works through, Project Homecoming.

NEW ORLEANS – More than five years after Hurricane Katrina, a number of rebuilding organizations have shuttered operations and moved on, despite the fact that this city still has nearly 50,000 blighted homes and numerous near-empty neighborhoods.

For one organization, there’s still more work to do.

Project Homecoming has helped struggling homeowners rebuild more than 125 homes since its creation in 2007 as a ministry of the Presbytery of South Louisiana and Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA). As efforts to rebuild New Orleans continue and needs shift, Project Homecoming is going through a sort of rebirth, as it transitions to its own 501c3 nonprofit by the end of this year.

Volunteers from a Presbyterian church in Pennsylvania strip paint on a Project Homecoming work site in the Lower Ninth Ward.

“There’s a lot of faith-based groups that have left New Orleans; Presbyterians are some of the ones that remain because of PDA’s planning for a long-term commitment,” said Executive Director Jean Marie Peacock. “We’re thankful for the financial support they provided and the partnership that initiated Project Homecoming’s commitment to the long-term recovery in New Orleans.”

The PDA is now transitioning out of the Gulf, after more than five years of helping to rebuild communities in states all along the coast. It closed the last of its volunteer villages recently, but it remains involved in rebuilding efforts through a $500,000 grant it awarded to Project Homecoming for 2011.

Knowing that PDA would wind down efforts one day, Project Homecoming took steps toward continuing in New Orleans. One of the steps: seeking and winning a $500,000 grant from the city and acquiring a contractor’s license to tackle major blight through building and selling new homes to low-income families.

“It’s really an extension of what we have been doing with hurricane recovery,” Peacock said. “We’ll still continue to work with individuals, but we’re now branching into recovery work of neighborhoods.”

At the time Project Homecoming came together as a partnership of South Louisiana churches, the focus was on helping low-income, elderly and disabled homeowners lacking enough funds to rebuild after hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Many of its clients were previously taken advantage of by unscrupulous contractors, leaving them unable to finance further reconstruction.

Then and now, Project Homecoming case managers help clients navigate the rebuilding process, while construction and onsite managers marshal teams of volunteers to do construction on the homes at about a third of the cost of using contractors. Volunteers do everything minus plumbing, electrical, and heating, ventilating and air conditioning systems; the organization hires trusted licensed professionals for that work.

Most of the nearly 10,000 volunteers who have worked through Project Homecoming over the years have come from Presbyterian churches all over the country. Director of Public Relations and Marketing Vann Joines said 2010 was the organization’s biggest volunteer year ever; they experienced a 15 percent increase in volunteers over 2009.

Tomorrow: How Project Homecoming will help revitalize neighborhoods through building new homes for low-income families.

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Christmas Party Spans Divide Between Rich, Poor, If Only For An Evening

December 17, 2010 By
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SAN JOSE, CA. – On one recent evening in a downtown office, the great divide between Silicon Valley’s rich and poor melted away amidst some baked ham, gingerbread cookies and a few Christmas carols.

About 50 guests from a local homeless shelter and a low-income housing complex and their volunteer hosts enjoyed a little Christmas spirit around festive tables before shuttling back to a life of uncertainty.

There was no agenda that night, other than to give guests a chance to relax, enjoy a holiday meal, and share conversations away from the stress of a life on the streets.

The event was the third annual “Luke 14” Christmas Party at The River Church Community in downtown San Jose. Overseeing the festivities was Andy Singleterry and his wife Janet, church members who have both committed themselves to working with the poor. Volunteers from The River and at least two other local churches joined them.

As Singleterry explained to the hosts in a huddle before guests arrived, the title “Luke 14” comes from the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 14, in which Jesus advises people to “invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind,” instead of their rich friends and neighbors.

Among the volunteers that night were high tech employees, leaders in business, educators, and in some cases their children, for whom homelessness is usually more of an abstract idea than a reality. For this one evening the volunteers and the homeless and low income men and women interacted as if there was no divide between them, sharing stories about families, lives, and memories of Christmas’ past.

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Mandatory Volunteering Proves Beneficial – Under Right Circumstances

August 2, 2010 By
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When I first heard about mandatory volunteering in high schools about a decade ago I thought it was a real-life oxymoron. To me volunteering was only real when it was done out of a true desire to help, not out of a fear of missing requirements. I also cast a wary eye on teen volunteering that was done purely for puffing up college applications. I was doubtful that these types of volunteering had long-term positive effects on students. But recent studies have shown that under the right circumstances, mandatory volunteering actually improves the chances of future community involvement.

In Saturday’s “Shortcuts” column in the business section of the New York Times, columnist Alina Tugend did an interesting piece about the studies called, “The Benefits of Volunteerisim, If the Service is Real.” The studies found that when the volunteer jobs were meaningful – in other words, volunteers could see how their work was benefiting others – the volunteers were more likely to volunteer in the future. Even more so if the work was combined with a chance to talk about it with other students in class and talk about the greater societal issues involved. Those discussions can help students see that problems aren’t just solved through individual efforts, but also through public policy. That can lead to students who are more likely to vote and take part of the civic process in the future.

There is a danger to giving students just any volunteer job. One unpublished study found that engaging students in “busy work” can actually be detrimental to future volunteer involvement. So for example, if students were told they were going to be helping people, only to perform menial tasks that seem unrelated to actually helping others, that could lead to frustration and being turned off to volunteering in the future.

These results are good news for communities. It’s a win-win-win situation. Volunteering by students can help individuals who are on the receiving end, it can help the students to grow and change in positive ways, and it can help communities that will benefit from future involvement by the students as adults.

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