My goal is to help YOU find your service passion — your contribution in this world.Each month I try a new service adventure and encourage you to try one also and post your stories here.

I ran into Lenore last week on my way to do my Wednesday service work at our church.  Lenore was with a younger guy, and she was walking away from the church entrance, not toward it.  Knowing that Lenore normally shows up on Wednesdays to get food and some help with her bills, I asked her if she would be coming by to see us. 

Yes, I am, she replied, but she couldn’t make it today because she needed to ring the Salvation Army bell a few blocks away.  She asked me if she could give a letter to our project manager tomorrow, and I said I’d tell the project manager to expect to hear from her.

Lenore and her escort slowly walked off toward her Salvation Army appointment.  Over the last few days I’ve wondered how many people would postpone a chance for food or money to volunteer for someone else.  At the very least, our church waiting room had coffee, pastries and heat.  Lenore would be out in the cold, ringing her Salvation Army bell, imploring people to give their spare change to someone who needed it more than her.

Would you forego a necessity to help someone else?  I know my answer, and I don’t like it. 

Thanks, Lenore.  You’ve inspired me more than you know.

Get out and give back. 

Filed under: Donating, Giving, Humanity, In the Neighborhood | No Comments »

apt-letter-of-intent.pdf

Questions for Get Out and Give Backget-out-and-give-back-questions.doc

I’m looking for people to be nominated as a possible person to be profiled on the “Get Out and Give Back” television show.  (If you are unfamiliar with this show, you can view the demo here):

http://65.109.45.213/portfolio.asp?itemId=100

This show has been accepted by American Public Television (APT) for national distribution on public television once underwriting is secured (see attachment).  That means that this show has not yet been funded, and although I am aggressively pursuing underwriters, I cannot guarantee when it will happen.

Having said that, the Get Out and Give Back business includes the television show, as well as my public speaking, writing and coaching, all in service of inspiring people to contribute and give back.  To encourage people and organizations to contribute, I’m asking each of you for your permission to tell your stories in my speaking, writing, potential book-writing, and television show.  (“Writing” means any non-book writing, such as magazine articles, the Get Out and Give Back blog, etc.).  I will not use your name in any of my coaching work.  The attached questionnaire include an agreement that I’m asking you to initial and sign, that basically says you’re OK with all of this.  Would you please complete the questions in the attachment then scan/email it back to me? 

The unique focus of Get Out and Give Back is that it focuses on the change made within the individual who has found his/her contribution, rather than the contribution itself.  I believe this perspective has been under-emphasized and the “what I get out of giving” viewpoint can create a desire in people to more actively seek out and want to contribute.  Your stories of how finding your unique contribution, and how it matches who you are (if it does), will certainly inspire others to look within themselves and seek out the kinds of contribution that feels most authentic to them.

If you have any questions at all, please contact me at jane@getoutandgiveback.com.  And please feel free to forward this email on to anyone else you know who has profoundly changed after finding their way to contribute, and invite them to participate!  

I wish each of you a very happy holiday, full of cheer and love. 

Jane

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I’ve just come back home after spending a few hours at a nursing home as part of the Holiday Project (www.holidayproject.org).  According to the team lead, 60% of people in nursing home never get visitors, even over the holidays.  So, the Holiday Project lines up volunteers to visit people in nursing homes during Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentines’ Day, etc.  The last time I did a Holiday Project visit over Thanksgiving was in 2003 or something so it’s been awhile.  I was especially apprehensive because the last time I saw my Dad before he died was Thanksgiving in 2007, and even now I get weepy when I think about it.  I didn’t know how I’d handle seeing sweet old men all by themselves.   Can’t say I finish a Holiday Project feeling joyous, but it’s something I want to do.

Two people I visited stayed with me.  The first one was my very first visit - a 24-year-old girl.   She looked like she had cerebral palsy and she was very difficult to hear, like she had a learning disability.  She would point at something green and say it was purple, then say it was green, so I couldn’t tell if she was teasing or not.  One of the nursing staff was with her.  I only stayed a few minutes because it was so difficult to speak with her.  As I turned to leave I saw a huge poster on the wall facing her.  It was covered with pictures of a beautiful girl – class pictures, college graduation pictures, pictures with friends.  The girl, whoever she was, was as pretty as a TV actor.  And it was the girl in the nursing home bed.  I have no idea what happened to her, but it must have happened in the last two years if her college graduation picture was on the poster.  I wanted to ask the nurse but it was really none of my business.  I wondered if she was hit by a drunk driver, or if she was drinking and driving, or what.   What I really wanted to do was to have my 19-year-old niece visit her, along with every college freshman in the world.

Then I visited another woman for well over an hour.  She was large and bedridden and quite articulate, and spent 35 years in a high-level government job.   She was divorced with two sons, both of whom lived locally.  Neither one had planned to visit her.  She told me how she had tolerated one son’s marriage to a “lower class” woman, and although she said she never voiced her disapproval, I suspect that had a whole lot to do with why her sons didn’t visit with her.  I stayed with her because first, she was easy to talk with, and second, because I was pretty sure that no family would visit with her today.  She was kind of bossy to the nurses and I’ll be she is difficult to deal with.  Right around noon one of her sons called her, and she was so surprised and happy to hear from him.

And now I am back home, putting the final touches on our own Thanksgiving for 16.  What a contrast to this morning – a reminder once again to take nothing for granted and family is everything.  How lucky I am.

Get out and give back. 

Filed under: Eldercare, Holidays, Kindness | 1 Comment »

I’m as anti-smoking as any non-smoker.  So it was a surprise when I found myself tempted to buy a pack of cigarettes for someone Monday afternoon.  Better explain:  As I waited at the Rhode Island platform to catch the Red Line, and old guy in an old-fashioned, manual wheelchair asked me for some change for lunch.  I was already mad at myself because I’d left my baggie of change (see the “$3.99″ post) at home so I dug in my wallet and gave him all of my spare coins.  He looked to be in his 60’s and he wore a homemade name tag that identified him as a Vietnam veteran named Al.  He wore old shabby clothes and a red felt Santa hat.  At least he was in the holiday spirit!

Al thanked me and put the money in a plastic container – about the size of a Cool Whip container – which was already full of coins.  He then started talking pretty loudly to no one in particular.  When he got on the metro with me he was still talking to anyone within earshot, particularly to another, younger guy in an electronic wheelchair who obviously didn’t want to engage in conversation.  He talked about being homeless for three yearas and shelters and how he tried to get an electronic wheelchair but couldn’t.  I watched the whole thing from my seat, feeling a mix of compassion and gratitude that Al wasn’t fixating his conversation directly at me. 

Then Al maneuvered his wheelchair to pick up an old, used cigarette butt off of the metro floor.  It looked like it had been there for awhile and must have been stepped on at least six hundred times.  He put the butt in his mouth like he was going to smoke it the minute he got off the metro and found a light.   Honestly, there couldn’t have been more than 1/4″ of cigarette left on that thing before he would hit that cottony filter stuff at the end. 

When he and I got off the metro at Gallery Place, he still had that nasty butt in his mouth and said something about having had a bullet lodged in his spine for 37 years.  He thanked me for my donation and wheeled away.  I thanked him for his service – something I’ve never said to a homeless-looking guy who stated he was a vet. 

I wonder if he actually smoked that disgusting butt.  And I wonder if I would have bought him a pack of cigarettes if we’d been near a vendor.  I might have. 

Does buying cigarettes for a disabled, possibly homeless vet a good thing or a bad thing?

 Get out and give back. 

Filed under: Cancer, Homelessness, Military | 1 Comment »

As I prepare to move the “Get Out and Give Back” blog and newspaper column to a bigger writing/speaking/coaching venue, I realized that I’d been spending too much time in the last few months holed up developing the business and not enough time contributing and serving.  So, yesterday (Wednesday) I pried my fingers off of my laptop and walked two blocks to the local church to help out with a bi-weekly project to help the underserved with food, clothing, funds and other needs.

I live in a historic neighborhood with marked socio-economic contrasts.  Some of the homes here cost in the mid-millions, while others a few blocks away are ghetto.  The rest of us are somewhere in the middle.  There’s a CVS two blocks east and south of me that I run into all the time for whatever.  And there’s a convenience store two blocks north and one block east with barred windows, five locks on the doors and the largest variety of Boone’s Farm cheap wine that I’ve ever seen that I walked into once and was afraid of being held up.  We share the same zip code but not much more. 

So as always, even those two hours of service gave me the butt-kicking perspective that I desperately needed.  The doors of the church opened at 9 a.m.  Our guests lined up as early as 6 a.m.  When about 40 had signed in we closed off the sign-in roster and began helping each one on a first in/first served basis.  I shadowed one of the more seasoned volunteers as she called utility companies on behalf of our guests to curtail their power shut-offs, wrote small checks to help out with rent and asked some to return the next day when they could produce a lease or contact information for a landlord.  Every guest who we served was offered a visit to the food pantry, and some of them were there only for the food. 

Then finally, as it neared 11:00 and our daily funds dwindled south of ten dollars, we announced that we were almost out of money for the day.  A woman holding the right side of her jaw asked for money to buy ibuprofen.  As another volunteer called CVS to get the cost of an over-the-counter bottle, the guest told me that she had an absessed tooth that wouldn’t be pulled until next Monday, and it was so painful that she wanted to throw up.   So we wrote our last check for $3.99, gave her fifty cents for tax, and sent her off to CVS.

I’ve interviewed several people about what would compel them to attend one of my speaking engagements, and what would inspire them to contribute.  Several mentioned that they wanted to hear results – what does $100, or $10, buy?  How would an hour of my time help someone?  How do I know if my gift of time, talent or treasure will make a difference?

And now I have the answer:  $5.00 will give a homeless man two new pairs of underwear.   A big basket of leftover Halloween candy will brighten up the two-hour wait for assistance.  $7.80 gives a veteran a round-trip bus ticket to the Veterans’ Hospital for a PTSD appointment.  And a gift of $3.99 - and tax – will help a woman endure the mind-numbing pain of an absessed tooth for five days. 

So today I dumped all of the change I’ve kept in a “dream vacation” bank and put it in a clear baggie.  And that baggie is going in my coat pocket.   So now when a stranger asks me for a quarter for a bus token it will be my honor to give it to him.

Can you keep some spare change in your pocket?

Get out and give back.

Filed under: Donating, Faith-based, Giving, Homelessness, Humanity, In the Neighborhood, Kindness | 1 Comment »

What an amazing way to spend Veterans’ Day!  My husband and I were invited to attend the Mission Serve kickoff event at George Washington University.  Part of the ServeNation coalition, Mission Serve is the civilian-military initiative comprised of 33 partnerships (mostly non-profits and NGOs) committed to serve the men and women of the armed forces, veterans and their families.

The keynote speaker was Michelle Obama - I’ve always wanted to hear her speak.  She and Dr. Jill Biden both spoke, and it was worth the 45 minute wait outside in the chilly rain.  She appeared to get a little choked up as she talked with some of the soldiers she had met at Ft. Hood only the day before, who had ignored their own gunshot wounds to help their fellow soldiers.

I was impressed at the creative linkages formed among the non-profits dedicated to aligned with Mission Serve in their unified effort to help veterans returning from tours in Iraq and Afghanistan transit to a productive, leadership role in their communities.  

“The Telling Project” (www.thetellingproject.org) was by far the most emotional part of the event…I wish had performed before Mrs. Obama’s remarks so the media and the GW students would have seen it.  Five veterans and one spouse, sitting side-by-side in director’s chairs, re-enacted their military experiences.  Sometimes funny and mostly horrifying, their emotions were still raw as they re-lived playing the daily death lottery while deployed to the Middle East.  Some of the veteran performers were not OK, nor did they attempt to be.  Rather,  they turned their pain into performance art, and in doing so, maybe for the first time, I got a glimpse of the hell that some of our veterans shoulder each day.

You need to see “The Telling Project.”

Filed under: Military | No Comments »

It was my second trip to the area in as many months.

My first was with a group of Furman University students who are members of an on campus United Methodist group called Wesley Fellowship. It was their spring break and the second trip to the area for many in the group. Their choice had been a Habitat house in the Bahamas, or to return to the Gulf. They chose the Gulf. We worked in the small gulfside community of Pass Christian or  “The Pass” as the locals call it. The Pass was on the northeast edge of the storm., usually the worst area for a hurricane. From the damage I saw, this storm was no exception. 90% ( and that’s conservative ) of all physical structures were either obliterated or severely damaged. No commercial structure of any kind was available for use for several weeks after the storm.  Our task was to sheetrock the ceiling of one home and complete the finishing touches on another. The latter would be the finishing touches before the resident’s moved out of their 8’x25’ Katrina trailer where a single mom and two children had lived for most of the last 15 months. For the folks that got to work on the this home, it was a special joy. Most on this team had  been to the area the year before and seen the destruction at it’s worse. The team shared that being able to help someone begin to return their life to normal ( as normal as life can be in this situation) was a special gift.  The home that I worked on became known as the sheetrock house. For a team of virtually unskilled labor to be  taught the art of hanging sheet rock, and get all of the ceilings done in 3 days, would require nothing short of divine intervention. We got it. Our teacher was Mike Zimmerman, formerly a bartender in Detroit, MI when the storm hit. He would watch the news hour after hour and the burden on his heart finally overpowered him. He told a few patrons that he had to go do something, even though he had no practical skills. Within  1 week, he sold most everything he had, raised almost 3000.00 in donations, postponed a pending marriage and left for the coast almost 750 miles away. He knew no one. He arrived 9 weeks after the storm on the steps of the first local church he found and just said “I am here to help, use me”. Today Mike literally can do anything. His fiancé now wife is a social worker and the two live in a garage apartment. They plan on staying as long as there is work. They’ll be there a long time.

Mike taught 3 of us how to hang sheetrock. By the third day, the first  group had spun off 3 other teams. Mission accomplished at the Sheetrock House.

I really hadn’t planned on returning to the area but our Youth Director at my home church of Advent UMC, Gene Aiken, approached me and said he was a team leader short, could I help. I asked what will I be doing and his answer made me gasp, “sheetrock”.

Nothing I saw in the Pass prepared me for what I would see in St. Bernard Parish, a community outside of New Orleans. It wasn’t the utter destruction we had seen in Pass, it was just empty. Row after row, street after street of vacant house and buildings, dirty, gray, ceilings collapsed, waste.

Our temporary home in The  Pass had been Diamondhead UMC, sleeping in their clean, air-conditioned Fellowship hall and eating in their spotless kitchen. Not to be in St Bernard Parish. We slept in a converted tiny community Methodist Church that had been completely submerged for nearly three weeks. Inside were concrete floors, stud walls , lots of dehumidifiers and fans. Bugs, Bugs and more Bugs. Each evening neighbors would come over and tell us their story. This is a common trait I have experienced on nearly every trip I have been on, people want to share their story. I had told the team the evening before we started about this learning. Take time to listen, you  may be the closest thing to someone who cares they have ever met.

My recently acquired proficiency in sheetrock hanging was seriously a gift from the Lord. I spent the first day training 3 teams. Fortunately we had one among us who knew how to tape and mud ( spackle ). By the 3rd day we had 7 teams expertly hanging sheetrock. We completed one house for a guy name Matt. Matt has severe diabetes and is paralyzed in his left hand and foot. Nonetheless, he has done most of the work on his home himself. Matt’s spirit and attitude significantly affected us all. When we asked him how he had handled losing so much, his answer shook me, he said” I have never attached myself to much of anything, and I know who I should trust for everything else”. 

Amazingly, we found one of Matt’s Mom’s prayers from a small prayer book he said she read all of the time. She had died 1 year before the storm and had left him the house. The name of the prayer was simply ‘Advent Prayer’. ( the irony wasn’t lost on us).

Most Holy God, as we prepare to celebrate your coming among us, help us to open our hearts to your presence, this Advent may we discover you in those with whom we live and work, especially the struggling and the needy. May we find words of gratitude for what we have and words of encouragement for those who despair. May we desire the coming of your kingdom, not just as a final fix at the end of time, but as a renewal of our hearts this very day. Amen.

 When we found this 3 x 5 piece of paper, laminated to a board by filth and debris ( Matt’s house had been submerged up to the gutters for 3 weeks ) we had to pause and marvel at the miracle of this one piece of paper surviving volumes of water and being found 19months later by us, a group from Advent, 600 miles away,  who were there simply to help. 

Our other home was a single mom who was out of money. She said that just before the storm she had recommitted her life to Christ, walked away from 27 years at Kmart to start working with children. She said the temptation to get a better job at times was over powering. She said that she had kept praying that God would send her laborers to help her. She said over and over what an answer to prayer we were.

I encourage you to intentionally seek out anyway you can to help those who have many years of struggle ahead of them in this devastated area. As a local pastor said at church service we attended “ God has given us the opportunity to do a new thing, with our neighbors and our city”. I agree. Go, serve, give, pray.

An organization that  regularly leads working teams is:

www.missionarysupply.org

Filed under: Faith-based, Guest Bloggers, Natural Disasters | No Comments »

     July, I think, is our most patriotic month. Maybe it’s the explosion of fireworks on the fourth day, or that all of America turns red, white and blue, or that last weekend my husband and I were lucky enough to see Tiger Woods honor military veterans throughout the week as he played and won the AT&T National golf tournament. In any case, there’s something about July that makes me want to wave our flag.
     
      Or maybe veterans are on my mind because we biked around the National World War II Memorial, with its imposing columns and rejuvenating fountains, last weekend. No, I’ve been thinking about veterans ever since we attended a funeral at Arlington Cemetery with full military honors last month. 
     
      Arlington Cemetery has its own sacredness that you won’t find anywhere else in the world. There’s a simplicity to the acres of green grass and small, white marble headstones that creates a zen-like tranquility that reinforces the “resting place” intention of a cemetery. 
     
      I had no idea how big Arlington Cemetery was until we drove, then walked, behind the caisson. As the horses slowly pulled the horse-drawn, flag-draped coffin through the winding paths of Arlington, it reminded me of that famous photograph of John-John Kennedy, wearing his peacoat and baby shoes, saluting his daddy’s coffin almost 50 years ago. This time, though, no onlookers lined the road. Instead, thousands of silent headstones stood at attention, honoring their newest member. Most headstones bore only the service member’s name and dates of birth and death. Some of these veterans never made it to age 20. Some lived to a ripe old age and their headstones named a wife or two or three.   
 
      During the ceremony we stood rigidly, not daring to wipe sweat or shift feet as the young military chaplain attempted to comfort us. As the rifles blasted their 21-gun salute, the bugle player played his lonely “Taps” and the burial flag was crisply folded and presented to the new widow, I looked across at those thousands of headstones, little Casper the Friendly Ghosts, standing sentinel and silently welcoming their newest member to their eternal club. And for every headstone I saw a mother, a wife, a father or a son, grief-stricken by their loss but proud of the life served. 
     
      If you’ve never visited Arlington Cemetery, I hope you add it to your must-see list the next time you’re in Washington, D.C. All funerals are heartbreaking but if you ever have the honor of attending a military funeral, please do so. And if you don’t, I hope you honor and thank our country’s veterans. They gave back. 
     
      Get out and give back.

Filed under: Holidays, Military | 4 Comments »

      Earlier this month it was my honor to deliver the commencement address at my alma mater high school in Bellefontaine, Ohio. There’s always something safe about going home. Mary Rutan Park still has its four tennis courts and the pool is still open from Memorial Day to Labor Day. 
     
      As I encouraged Bellefontaine’s 202 newest graduates to contribute, leave a legacy and connect with people throughout the world, it occurred to me that I would not be offering advice, encouragement and hopefully a little wisdom were it not for all of the front-line teachers and behind-the-scenes administrators. Some of them chose education as their life profession. Others manage to crowd the role of coach, booster club or PTA president, or board of education member into a life already crammed with work and family. Nonetheless, each of them made the conscious decision to push us, at 18 years old, out the door fully equipped to take on and improve the world.
     
      I’d graduated a long time ago with part of that school leadership team. And as we reminisced about some of the idiot things we did back in the day, it was clear to me that my former classmates had plotted a deliberate winning strategy for Bellefontaine High School’s graduates that would make Gen. Petraeus proud: More than $200,000 in financial aid and scholarship money went to those who applied for it. The number of kids graduating with college credit skyrocketed from 25 last year to 133 this year. Five graduates had chosen a military profession, with one Marine leaving for boot camp that evening.
     
      The business of providing great education is not a task for the weak or the lazy. It takes some effort to be in the top 20 percent of anything, whether it be academic, athletic or business. However, to get to the top 1 percent of that 20 percent (think Tiger Woods or Bill Gates) the level of effort gets statistically tougher the closer you zoom in toward those one-digit percentages. 
     
      As I chatted with year 2013’s next international business major, computer scientist engineer and Broadway star, I felt safe and hopeful, if only because this generation will one day take care of my generation. If the high school graduates across the country are anything like the new graduates of Bellefontaine, Ohio, then I’m in good hands.
     
      If you’re in the profession of training minds (and that’s almost all of us), I challenge you push yourself to that final 1 percent of excellence. If you’re on the receiving end, kick up the effort and push yourself to that 1 percent of excellence too.  And along the way, thank your teachers, your coaches, your parents, your bus driver and all of those volunteers. 
     
      Thank you for our next generation of leaders, Bellefontaine. You give back.
     
      Get out and give back.

Filed under: Children, Education, Family, In the Neighborhood | 2 Comments »

        A long time ago my dad decided to give one percent of the gross sales from his lumberyard business to the poorest village in the western hemisphere. Through a little research he was partnered with a village outside Port-au-Prince, Haiti. For years he sent a check to a French nun down there and in time the village’s population doubled as his regular donations brought them food, electricity, running water, a school and musical instruments.
      
       I have always been fascinated by the good that one percent can do. The website www.onepercentfortheplanet.org encourages 1136 companies to donate 1% of their sales to a network of 175 environmental organizations worldwide. Another site, www.theonepercent.org, connects nonprofit organizations in need of design assistance with architecture and design firms willing to donate their time pro bono in the Washington, DC area. Finally, www.onepercentclub.org encourages its members to donate at least one percent of their net worth or five percent of their income to the charitable cause of their choice.
      
       Dad was on to something. I wonder what the world would be like if we each spent one percent of our time consciously doing good. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics there were nearly 190,000,000 of us between the ages of 18 – 64 in the United States in 2007 and 52,171,000 of us ages 16 to 64, (that’s just over one in four) did some volunteer work that year. 
      
       I learned a long time ago never to do math in public, so it is with some trepidation that I offer that 7.3 hours equates to about one percent of your time each month. If you subtract eight of those 24 hours to sleep, your one percent is down to less than five hours each month. What if every single one of us devoted five hours each month to service? I hold a very liberal standard for “service” and define it as everything from the traditional (think building a house with Habitat for Humanity) to doing what comes naturally (a jogger running the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure) to spending a couple of hours visiting with sweet elderly lady across the street, making dinner for the bedridden co-worker with four kids or planting a few of your flowers bulbs in a forgotten part of a community common area.
      
       My request to you is that each month, five of your waking hours are devoted to doing some good. It can make the world better or make your home better, but the end result is that doing good one percent of the time becomes part of your lifestyle. (Groceries? Check. Clean the house? Check. Make sandwiches for the shelter? Check.)
      
       Dad always said that the check he wrote for Haiti each month was the only bill he didn’t mind paying.  He loved giving his one percent.  What if we all did?
      
       Get out and give back.

Filed under: Donating, Giving | No Comments »