We hosted our first ever, not-so-spooky Halloween themed home repair event to cap off our group volunteer season, typically March through early November. BOO! Home Repair Doesn’t Have to be Scary encourage volunteers, both seasoned and new, to provide home repairs, yard clean ups and gutter cleaning to low-income senior homeowners across the city. This event resulted in ten homeowners being helped and twelve projects being completed at no cost to the homeowner. The event was sponsored by Elements Financial.
Group projects are typically matched with the group of volunteers interested in working with NeighborLink Indianapolis. For the BOO! Event volunteers were unaware of their projects until they arrived at the event’s welcome reception at 8:30 a.m. Projects ranged from exterior house painting to various yard work tasks, gutter repair and cleaning all the way to removing debris from structures that had been torn down. All supplies were provided on site and the projects wrapped up by 1:00 p.m.
“It touches my heart to see these volunteers come out and help me with my home.” Said Ms. Scott, an 88 year old homeowner who had her gutters cleaned by a group of volunteers. “Especially seeing how young some of these volunteers are, they could be at home doing their own thing but instead, they’re taking time to help me and that means so much.”
The BOO! Event was sponsored by Elements Financial. Volunteers came from across the city to participate. The oldest volunteer was 84 and even brought fellow congregants from his church. NeighborLink Project Coordinators helped out with some of the more handy-heavy projects like tree trimming and gutter repairs. While first-timers found an easy way to chip in by clearing out old debris and trash from garages or painting a house. Fortunately, the weather was kind enough to be just warm enough to work with the paint.
Senior homeowner and veteran of the U.S. Army, Mr. Jodie J. Davis Jr. hung out with his group of volunteers the majority of their volunteer time, thanking them, encouraging them and just overall being overjoyed at the help he was receiving. "I thought for sure I wouldn't even see anyone until next spring when I called." Pointing out his new front steps and already half of his house painted, "But here you all are and I could just hug each and every one of you."
All in all, this was a great wrap up for our larger group projects for 2021 and a successful event that we look forward to doing in 2022. Thank you to everyone who joined us in 2021 (and to those who still have a few group projects to go). We would be unable to what we do without the generous time, treasure and talents of our volunteers and donors.
See photos from the event here.
To download the PDF press release, click below.
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