At The InSource Group, giving back to the community is an integral part of our corporate culture. While our staff participates in a variety of philanthropic endeavors, the company also sponsors our membership in Entrepreneur For North Texas. EFNT, in turn, sponsors an event each year on September 11th called the “Freedom Day Event.” This takes place no matter what the weather, day of the week, or any other complication.
Our volunteers were selected to work with the Habitat for Humanity: Brush with Kindness project. The task was to paint a house near Fair Park that was owned by the lovely Miss Annie Faye. We could not have asked for a better cause to support. Miss Annie has experienced several recent tragic events; she just became a widow and her 29-year-old son was killed in an act of street violence.
We arrived at the house to find it covered with severely deteriorated and flaking dark green paint with some drab gray trim. Upon arrival, we were joined by three other volunteers from one of our clients (It’s a small world!), some Habitat for Humanity personnel and some of Miss Annie’s wonderful family and friends. At approximately 9:30AM, everyone grabbed ladders, paint, brushes and rollers and got to work on various parts of the house exterior. We began painting the house a stunningly vibrant desert red with a neutral gray-beige for the trim.
The time flew past while we diligently worked and bantered back and forth. Around noon, lunch arrived, so we cleaned up our areas and began to socialize while scarfing down some sandwiches. We all finished our meal in about 15 minutes and fervently returned to our painting-we wanted to get it done!
Lena, our Habitat leader, said we had a hard stop at 2:00 PM. At 1:15 a Habitat director called out to Lena and told her we had 45 minutes to finish. Then suddenly just like in those HGTV home improvement shows, we all started painting at warp speed, and starting really getting to the details.
A chant started in the front, “LET NO GREEN BE SEEN!” We even called for additional ladders and brushes and everyone hunkered down, determined to finish before our time ran out. Precisely at our deadline we had successfully accomplished our task and cleaned up our space. Our restore was complete and Miss Annie Faye’s home looked completely different.
When we were finished painting, picking up the excess trash and washing out the brushes, Lena proudly told us she has never had a crew work as diligently as we did. She noted that we were fast and that her superiors had not expected our team to finish the largest home of the day. She also mentioned that she was amazed that we only took a 15-minute lunch and got right back to work.
Tears of joy came unbidden to Annie Faye’s eyes when she was escorted out to view her newly painted home. She was so very thankful and it was truly amazing to see her reaction. Spending the day to turn tragedy into an inspiring sense of hope was accomplished 9/11/11 by The InSource Group staff.
We joined together, through the bond of community service, to pay tribute to those lives that were forever changed by the devastating events that occurred 10 years ago. My colleagues and I rolled up our sleeves and spent the day painting and making repairs that make a difference in our community and specifically to a person that needed our help. We hope that our small service today will help continue the larger tradition of honoring the lives that were so drastically changed on September 11, 2001. United we serve. United we stand.