In 2014, a conversation on a flight back from serving in the Dominican gave me exposure to a non-profit named Real Experiences Affecting Change. A later conversation with a man named Tim Dayton, the co-founder and Director of REACH, led to an opportunity as Project Director for the summer of 2014. Thanks to Tim’s ‘jump-in’ teaching style and REACH’s high expectations of its interns, I was thrown into a demanding environment where I found my passion outworked my fatigue: I discovered a work ethic on par with my Poppop, and I began to see my potential as a leader. I’ve compiled my three favorite projects, as well as a unique project, to embody this growth.

Miss Lois and Miss Lisa were a mother and daughter living in a rough part of Roanoke with their back yard as an escape. They surrounded themselves by flowers, painted rocks, and trees symbolizing their grand kids, and often sat on the back porch together. In preparing for projects and matching youth groups with project managers and home owners, this group integrated faster than any other that summer. We repaired their front porch, completely rebuilt their back porch on top of an unexpected slab of concrete (that required some ingenuity), and painted their blank rocks with the kids’ names. Miss Lisa surprised us by calling in the local news team, wanting to expose the community to REACH and the group’s good work. While the youth group enjoyed using power tools on camera and the project manager spoke about REACH’s mission, I learned a lesson in leading where I was needed; Miss Lois said she wanted to tell the camera crew all about us, but couldn’t do it unless I held her hand off-camera.

Miss Vicky Smith lived with her daughter, three grandchildren, two dogs, two cats, and two turtles under one roof. It was hard to schedule a timeline due to most people in the house working full jobs all days of the week. Miss Vicky felt her home was unsafe for her family, with a leaking roof ready to cave in and a back porch one could fall off or thru. The youth group loved tackling the roofing project, guided by a great teacher named Tim Day that treated every home as his own. Another lesson I learned was to promise little but to give everything possible: we did not have enough money to do both the roof and the back porch, as I had promised to Miss Vicky. I reached out to my home church in New Jersey, where I’d first attended these service trips as president of my youth group, and asked for their financial help. On an emotional Sunday, enough money was raised to finish three additional homes, and help was brought to those who really needed it.

Some projects were discovered thru word-of-mouth from living in the Salvation Army’s basement: Miss Mary was an active member her whole life and spoken of as most deserving of help. Her bathroom and kitchen floors were rotting through, but she still wanted to live at home despite fighting stage 4 cancer. Since this project came to us at the end of the summer, I reached out to my service fraternity APO for help as a labor force, and used the rest of my church’s fundraising to pay for materials. The project revealed to be more complicated than we thought, but with Tim’s volunteered advice and the group’s determination to finish, Miss Mary was the first to flush her new toilet. I was glad to watch my brothers hear Tommie’s appreciation for helping his mother, while also learning how to construct kitchen flooring. This project showed me, when surrounded by caring people, anything is possible.

Between the Salvation Army and the Roanoke Rescue Mission, on a street with very high pedestrian traffic, stood a crumbling garage next to the road. An idea for a mural was suggested to improve community morale for the many people that walk and drive past it every day. Tim encouraged anything was possible – despite never having done vertical concrete reparations or a mural. As I had all summer, I went to the extremely helpful guys at Lowes and learned what materials, tools, and time frames were needed for each step. I proposed the idea to several youth groups in addition to their projects, and everyone was open-minded. As we struggled to master the right ratio of concrete to water for cohesion, certain youth group leaders’ previous experience was essential to pressing forward. The mother of a junior intern worked with the home owner of the garage to sketch out his Victorian house surrounded by the Blue Ridge Mountains.

To let every youth group say they contributed, I balanced their individual home projects with working on the mural and subsequently improved communication with my project managers. Given their limited time frame, certain youth groups came out after dinner or at sunrise to continue flushing the wall to ready it for paint. An employee at the rescue mission down the road offered to help paint the mural, since she’d previously done caricatures and wanted to help. Pictured in the top right, she was a patient and charismatic teacher who showed the youth how to paint without overthinking.

Each day the high traffic walking and driving past the wall became more curious and asked more questions. Men in the neighborhood offered to help lay the concrete and kids wanted to help paint. The home owner’s grandkids came out to play the violin and viola for us, and yet another news crew stopped by to hear what the commotion was all about. An intern suggested painting the REACH symbol as a flower, and the mural was dedicated to another intern’s newborn child. People from the neighborhood, from the rescue mission, from youth groups all along the east coast, and interns from around the world worked together to create something beautiful to look at each day when passed by.