Working those Biceps

Yesterday Ali and I worked with UNITY, an organization that funds other organizations. Recently they have funded to move 249 homeless people off the streets. Some of these people have been living on the lawn of the City Hall. 160 have been housed. The major task now is furnishing the homes and providing other services to the clients, for instance transportation to and from jobs. Most furniture donations come from hotels going through renovations. A hotel donated about 35 sofa beds so we had to remove them from the hotel rooms and store them in a conference room until we could deliver them to the clients' homes. It only took us a few hours to relocate the sofa beds; it was a great bicep workout! Today some sofa beds were delivered and tomorrow I will be able to once again help UNITY deliver them. This involves moving them up and down stairs...Oh goodness, hopefully my biceps won't fail me tomorrow! I'm excited for tomorrow because along with delivering the sofa beds we are also allowed time to chat with the clients. Hearing a personal story and getting to know the individuals you help is a great feeling. I hope I have the opportunity to work with UNITY on a regular basis. So hopefully you will hear more about them in the near future!

Today Steve, Ali, Andre, & myself and a couple staff members (Dave & Dallas with his bum knee) went to Ms. Evelyn's house to disassemble scaffolding. Then we put some scaffolding back up in different locations around the house. Once again it was a good bicep workout! It was great working with this group because we rarely get to work with each other. Most of the time we are leading volunteers at separate projects. But this week we are not housing volunteers, so we tackled this project together. Slowly we are all starting to get to know one another, which of course is awesome! ...I didn't realize scaffolding could be so fun!

FYI- this whole bicep theme is a little joke between Ali and I...just play along! :)

Working for the Betterment of Society

My name is Amy and I was born and raised in Michigan. I first became acquainted with Hands On New Orleans in 2006 when my brother and I, along with friends, drove down to volunteer over Thanksgiving. Since then I thought about returning to New Orleans. This summer I learned of the Volunteer Leadership program with HONO and here I am!

This is my third week in New Orleans as a VL. I am happy to be once again working for the betterment of society. As each week progresses it confirms my belief that I was put on this Earth to do something great. No matter the magnitude, I will change the world and make it a better place. There is nothing more rewarding than making someone's life just a little easier. And Hands On New Orleans is giving me the tools to do so.