At our nightly
group meetings
we strongly
encouraged
people to
express their
feelings. We
were all going
through the
same situation
and it formed a
support group.
—Marc Young
style that could be easily expanded.
After beginning construction of the prototype, the group sought advice and
assistance from local elders and the
recipient families, who sometimes
pitched in on the effort. By the beginning of February 2008, HODR had
developed a familiarity with the
design, materials and techniques necessary to implement the prototype—
making it easy to replicate.
According to Ms. Chang, the project became much easier to manage
once they knew better how to navigate
relations with their host community
and how to engage the beneficiary
families they were working with.
HODR made the decision to extend
its stay until mid-April, entering phase
two of the project and calling for more
volunteers.
The group partnered with Save the
Children UK to transition the benefits of the Safe Space program into
permanent playground structures at
five local schools. Teams of eight to
10 volunteers traveled to remote villages and lived in classrooms or in
cyclone shelters during the on-site
builds.
double time
Hands On Disaster Response (HODR) has two sets of stakeholders to satisfy. It obviously
must help communities struck by disaster, but it also has to keep its volunteers happy. The
organization makes no secret of asking a lot of its people, yet it does boast a 61 percent rate
of return.
Eager to pitch in and get their hands dirty, volunteers stream in from around the world,
dedicating anywhere from a few days to a few months of their time and bringing various
skills with them.
Managing a volunteer crew is fairly easy because the people are drawn from a self-selected
group driven to succeed, Mr. Young says.
“Once you’re here you can fill whatever role you want to fill. We have attorneys come and
want to shovel, and brick workers come who want to help in the office, and we think that’s
great,” he says. “We also see motivated volunteers step up to lead crews—and we sometimes
target people who we think would be good leaders.”
No matter what task they take on, though, Mr. Young says it’s seeing the difference they
make every single day that keeps volunteers coming back to HODR projects.
