OK, Facebook army, it’s time to harness your power for good! ACTION ITEMS ARE BELOW!
Most of you have seen the tons of posts I’ve made in the last year or so about my experience with my incredible teammates at El Dorado Hills Brazilian Jiu Jitsu & Self Defense, and as part of my progression towards a blue belt promotion, we’re asked to put together a project within our community, something we’re passionate about. I’m going to use this as an opportunity to finally kick-start something I’ve been thinking about for a while. If all goes well, it will be an on-going project.
Many of you have probably seen posts in the past where I’ve gone down and volunteered with “Rebuild Together Sacramento” on projects where they work with a person or family who needs some help fixing things up around the house. The team will do things like replace flooring, paint, fix power outlets/switches, repair some stairs, etc., and I’ve found that I’m REALLY happy and fulfilled when I do things like that. It’s my small way of fighting back against how negative and angry everyone seems to be these days.
I’ve been trying to figure out who does that sort of stuff for our community in Placerville, but with no luck. Who is the person that folks call when their 90-year-old neighbor has front steps that are falling apart (or maybe they’re now in a wheelchair, and need a ramp), but just can’t afford to call a contractor out? Or if a friend-of-a-friend is a struggling single parent of 4 who works their butt off every day, but their house could really use a few things fixed to make every-day life easier?
I figured, if I can’t figure out who that is, maybe I should be that guy? Even if I don’t have the particular skill needed for an ask, I can both call on my colleagues in the construction industry and my community to help me out and use it as a chance to learn something new.
Long-term, I’m pretty sure I’m going to start up a non-profit to do all of this, because I’ll need to carry insurance, give receipts for businesses that donate materials (when I can convince them to), etc. But for now, I’m going to use the blue-belt project as my test run – it doesn’t have to be big and dramatic, I just want to see if there’s a need for this kind of organization. To that end, I have a few asks for you, my amazing circle of friends and family.
ACTION ITEMS
1) If you’re in the Placerville area and know someone who you think should be nominated, please use this form to submit their information: http://bit.ly/PVNom
2) If you’d like to volunteer to help out for this (and/or future) projects, please fill out your information using this form: http://bit.ly/PVVol
3) If you’re a local business who is interested in helping out, either by donating materials (I’ll know more about what’s needed once we nail down a nomination) or monetarily, please contact me directly – use my email jessejonesphoto@gmail.com if you would, please
4) I need a name! I’ve been loosely referring to this as “Placerville Rebuilds” but that’s too similar to the organization down in Sac, and I don’t want to make them grumpy, thinking I’m trying to confuse people. Give me suggestions in the comments or in a message, if you have one.
5) If you’ve got experience with starting a non-profit, or can help me figure out insurance, etc., please let me know that, as well.
The goal is to make this project happen sometime in the next month or two (hopefully by the end of October), so I’m really looking forward to seeing how much we can do together on this project! There will be future posts from me, keeping you all up-to-date.
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