Rebuilding Together is a community service organization that brings volunteers together to help rebuild and beautify the homes of families that cannot do it themselves.

In their words:

"Our mission is to preserve and revitalize houses and communities, assuring that low-income homeowners, particularly those who are elderly and disabled and families with children, live in warmth, safety, and independence."

I joined over a hundred volunteers this weekend to beautify a shelter for homeless families in central San Mateo County. The Redwood Family House is an old, converted apartment building that "provides transitional housing for up to nine families at one time."

The shelter has hardly any money of its own. It spends whatever it can on social workers and case managers who devote their time working with each family towards setting "realistic goals which enable them to become self-sufficient once again."

Over five hundred participated in this one-day Bay Area-wide event, supporting numerous other shelters and low-income families throughout the Peninsula area of Silicon Valley.

For the Redwood Family House, we repainted the stairways, railings, doors, and walls, as well as replanted the garden and rebuilt the children's playground in the back.

Several of the families came out to help us too. One Hispanic mother and her three young children grabbed paint brushes and stood right next to us. And when she wasn't looking, her children ran over to the free cookies and donuts and grabbed handfuls of goodies.

As we worked, the mother broke out into a lovely Hispanic song. I don't know if she knew how many people were enraptured by her melody, but when she stopped, the entire site erupted in applause. She hid her red face and her children jumped up and down.

It was defining moments like that that really made this effort real and meaningful to me.

Here we are, living and working in Silicon Valley, one of the wealthiest areas of the world. We often become so wrapped up in our lives that we forget there are those less fortune right at our doorstep. They are our neighbors, the families living down the street, which we pass by as we race off to work.

The other defining moment came as one little girl walked through the yard with a friend of hers.

Her friend asked, "What are all these people doin'?"

To which she replied, with all the swagger you'd expect out of a ten year old: "They paintin' mah house."

Yup. We painted her house. And what a beautiful house it is.

. . .

Do you like community service?