Who comes to volunteer after a disaster?

The answer?

Everybody.

This week I am working with a group of 30 retirees from a church in Horseshoe Bay, Texas. The group is made up of 30 retirees all of whom are over 65. The group split itself up by gender, and I worked with the women.

These women came in with fewer skills than most groups. They had no construction experience, they moved a bit slower than the college students I was used to working with, and although they did do some lifting, you couldn’t exactly describe it as “heavy.” But by the end of the first day they were rocking and rolling, we painted the entire interior of a house.

Working with this group reaffirmed my basic belief that disaster recovery is about communities. In the best cases, there are two full communities working together: the community affected and the community of people who come to help. In the community where the disaster struck, everyone feels the impact: Young and old, rich and poor,

I’ve been responding to disasters for years now. I always feel that people appreciate my lending a hand, but while working alongside these women, I realized that something felt different. They are closer to my grandparents’ age than mine, and just by being here, they send a powerful a message to the people of Galveston:

'Just as all of you were hit by this disaster, so are all of us here to help you to recover from it.'

-Elie Lowenfeld