What's motivating volunteers across the country, especially this Thanksgiving

0:00Happy Thanksgiving. On this holiday, we are doing something a little different. we are taking some time to talk about the volunteer work Americans do. For the past six months, we have been featuring stories of service and community in a series called Here to Help. Stories of people like 76-year-old Gerard Van Der Werken, a volunteer with Habitat for Humanity Austin. He loves the work. He did his 50th build this year. He says his favorite part is when he and other volunteers turn over the keys to the family who will be living in their new home. I was called a crier. Every dedication, I speak and I shed tears because what most people didn't realize that I was an immigrant too.

0:45I came to America many, many years ago. I was born in Jakarta, Indonesia. I'm basically Americanized, but to come to America at that time, there was a helping hand to get us here. And so I was very appreciative of that extending hand. So I was willing to give back. And so it just moves me to see that there are people in this world that really understands that you can't get through life without a helping hand. Earlier this year, we also heard from Lee Cooper. Cooper volunteers at Main Needs, a group that provides clothing for people in need, where he puts together shopping bags of clothes for people he will never meet, including some recovering from addiction.

1:27I know what it's like in early sobriety. I've been sober for 33 years. I did the best packing job I could for her. Tried to pick the prettiest, the newest, I mean. And then I gave her a Minute for Mom kit, which is a kit we do for moms as a rule, which has fancy soap and sometimes a hairbrush. And I wrote her a note that just said, good luck in your sobriety. Consider this. The benefits of volunteering stand out to many people, especially during Thanksgiving week.

2:00From NPR, I'm Scott Tetra.

2:27You nominated volunteer librarians and scout leaders. You told us stories of volunteering in food pantries and municipal boards, even community compost groups. Here are just a few examples of those. James and Hillary Cornwell are a married couple who have volunteered as medieval reenactors in middle school classrooms for 35 years. Don't worry, they've got armor. We bring real metal and leather pieces of armor for kids to try on. And while they're replicas, the pieces have been built to the same standards of durability that the real ones were made for centuries ago. My wife and I got into this line of volunteer work when we had just gotten together as a couple in the early 1990s.

3:03We were in our 20s when we started visiting middle school classrooms. Now all of us are old enough to be the 7th graders' grandparents. Well, there's a sense of fulfillment in volunteering in classrooms and in keeping connected with kids now that our own children are grown. Some of the motivation is selfish. The students keep us sharp. Jake Sale is a professional usher at San Francisco's War Memorial Opera House. He called us to nominate the people who volunteered to work with him during performances. There's a quiet dignity in what they do. Greeting first-time opera goers with a smile. Guiding lost audience members through ornate hallways.

3:39Standing for hours just to make sure somebody else has a beautiful night. Working alongside them has changed the way I think about service. It's not always about grand gestures. It's small acts of steadiness. Alan Smith Hicks nominated his mother, Sandra Hicks, from Manchester, New Hampshire, who passed away in 2020. She was the hardest working retired person I've ever known. In the 1970s, she was legally blind. But for almost 50 years, she dedicated her life to volunteerism, activism, advocacy, community education, and social justice.

4:18Thanksgiving week is one of the biggest times for volunteering across the country. So we wanted to check out one of those efforts close to us in the Washington area. For Cheddar Cheese, line A will be the Girl Scouts. And line B for Cheddar Cheese will be the Jacket Hill National Harbor. This past Saturday, hundreds of volunteers from local high schools, colleges, and historically black Greek letter organizations packed the student center at the University of the District of Columbia. They had a pretty straightforward goal to feed as many people as possible. Everyone was clamoring to speak with Ransom Miller, who was making sure there weren't any gaps in assembly line action.

4:56I want one person on each side and we got road tape. Is that good? Miller is the founder and chair of the nonprofit Project Giveback. It holds one of the largest annual Thanksgiving food distributions in the mid-Atlantic region. Meaty Bardinelli has been volunteering with Project Giveback for more than 20 years and remembers back when things were a little bit slimmer on the volunteer side. She said she's especially glad to see people getting involved this year when the government shutdown paused SNAP benefits for so many people and when federal workers in the region went more than a month without a paycheck.

5:29So I believe that this year's Project Giveback continues, not just this year, continues to show the importance of food insecurity. It's imperative that Maslow's hierarchy of needs starts off with food, clothing, and shelter. And so if we don't have food to sustain us, then it's a no-go. It's a non-starter, right? Jumir Farir, a college student at the Naval Academy, said he had everything he could have ever wanted growing up. So it's important for him to take the opportunity to help people who are less fortunate. He carried a box full of food that will help one of thousands of families. Chicken, stuffing, elbow noodles, cheese, flounder, carrots.

6:10I grabbed some pork or something of that nature. He was taking direction from project leader Ransom Miller. Miller recently stopped by NPR's studio to talk about the origins of Project Giveback. He recalled how the initial idea took shape as he was talking to a few co-workers. Actually, we were in a lunchroom, you know, lamenting over how blessed we were and how fortunate we were as young professionals. This was at your place of work? Yeah. So this was at TCBA, which is a local accounting firm. And just a lunchroom conversation that really people jumped into and shared how blessed they felt. You know, there was a homeless population downtown D.C.

6:52at that time, and we had just come in, talked to a couple of people who were going through some hard times. And that conversation turned into, hey, why don't we do something for somebody else this Thanksgiving? And, you know, everybody was supportive of it. And that year we helped six families for Thanksgiving. given. Initially, that was a great thing to do, but it was no big vision of what we have now. Just a few people at work, kind of on the fly, helping a handful of families. Yeah. And I think what happened was those same people came back the next year and said, hey, what are we doing this year?

7:31And I was like, well, I don't know. What do you mean? You know, the project where we gave back to the community and we gave food baskets. I was like, well let's do it again let's do it again he said well what are you calling this thing and he had just said those words together so i said well we're gonna call it project give back help people understand just how big we're talking here like what what what what's the best way to understand the scope of this in 2025 well i think think maybe close to a thousand volunteers getting up some at five in the morning to pack boxes for somebody else i think that's a big way to look at it because we are a volunteer organization.

8:14Nobody gets paid. We don't have any paid staff. All of the money that we raise goes into our programming, but we've assembled a team of people who have made that a seamless process. How many people do you get food to each year? Last year was 5 ,000. This year, actually, it's a funny story. My 11-year-old son, Harrison, asked me, how many families are we helping this year? And I said about 5 ,000. So he said, hmm, okay. He said, well, how many did we do last year? I said, about 5 ,000. He said, well, don't you think we should do more? And I was like, what do you mean? And immediately I started thinking, well, that's more money to raise.

8:57That's more coordination. And I started thinking about it. And then I just heard his voice and he was very confident. He's like, well, I think we should do more. Well, I'm wondering if maybe the increased focus on the safety net that we've seen across the country and here in D.C., thousands of federal workers went more than a month without a paycheck. We saw a disruption in SNAP benefits. There's a real focus on food assistance in the way that I don't think we've seen in a long time. How have you seen that from your point of view? I think doing this type of work, we see every year how hard it is for certain families.

9:32I'm talking about two-parent households working, having trouble making ends meet. It's troubling to a lot of people, but it's not a surprise because we know that there's definitely a need in this area and probably across the country. But there's a need in this area for food assistance. But this problem, the SNAP benefits and the federal government shutdown, exacerbated that problem. We have never gotten the amount of calls that we got this year. But I think there's something called positive peer pressure. if you're doing something that's good and your peer is looking around and saying, well, maybe I should be doing something like that.

10:09And that's what we hope to do. I think that's one of the reasons we've been able to expand. So we're doing this on what we call give back Saturday. And we're doing this in Washington, DC, Maryland, and Virginia, but we're also doing it in Oklahoma city, which is my hometown. We're also doing it in Indianapolis, Indiana. You're franchising it. Basically. Basically, what better the franchise than service and helping other people? That's Ransom Miller, the founder and chair of the nonprofit Project Give Back, which has held a Thanksgiving food distribution for more than 30 years now. Thank you so much for coming in.

10:47Yes. Happy Thanksgiving. Thank you. Thank you very much. As you just heard, the first year that Ransom Miller did Project Give Back fed six families. This year, it provided food for more than 5 ,700 families. You can hear more stories focused on service, community, and giving back year-round at npr.org slash here to help. This episode was produced by Matt Ozog, Jason Fuller, and Janaki Meadow. It was edited by Ashley Brown. Our executive producer is Sammy Yannigan.

11:19It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Scott Detrow.