Humanities Semester project

I decided to volunteer at encircletogether.org for their demolition day.

This took place on Saturday, July 23rd from 9AM to noon. We were
demoing and gutting a house that will be used as a family and youth
center for the SSA/LGBTQ+ community.
This is a beautiful home old home that was in disrepair and needed to
be gutted so that the remodeling can be done. From the outside the
home actually looks really good, it needs some work but not as much
as the inside. The plan was to gut the house, taking bathrooms down
the bare walls and floor, taking the tubs, sinks, toilets out. The flooring
in the kitchen, the railing and several cabinets in various places
needed to be removed. We needed to clean out the basement before
any tear out and repairs could be made. We also took wall paper off
the walls and all of the junk to the dump. My husband and I were part
of the crew that was taking the bathrooms out. I had a lot of fun being
able to just take everything out. It was hard work but fun to see a clean
slate for them to start working from. We are both hard workers and can
do almost anything so we just moved around as we were needed and
did a variety of different things.
A friend of mine started this organization with a couple of other people.
Her motivation is her Brother Brandt, who is one of my best friends.
She has watched his struggle throughout his life of being gay but not
wanting to admit it or come out because of the social stigmas that can
come with it in Utah and the LDS church. Brandt is still an active
member of the church even though he came out 2 years ago. He still
hasnt reconciled how to give up his religion to live the life he knows he
will live. His sister Nina has watched this and really struggled that
there wasnt really a place for him to go or her to go. There were
people on both sides of the fence on this discussion but not really
anything that is able to look at both sides and just offer love and
support. I chose this topic because I myself am LDS and I have several
close friends and a family member that really struggle with being
themselves and accepted. I think this home will be a wonderful refuge
of love for those that are not getting it from their families or from the
community. It will be a place they can go to find understanding and
others like them. It has been amazing to see and hear the stories from
so many different people that have reached out to Nina as she has
announced what she is doing. They have told her how grateful they
are. There have been stories shared with her about things that no one
knows. She has given a lot of hope with just the idea, so I cant
imagine how nice it will be to have the actual home in place.
Our volunteer work helped because we were able to donate our time
and hard work to get the house started. It is the beginning of
something wonderful.

I do think that my participation made me a more responsible citizen

because it promotes support and freedom of choice for a community
that is fighting for equal rights and the ability to be accepted by all of
society. This foundation/group is striving to give understanding to the
family or to the person that is struggling with issues regarding
sexuality. I think just having a safe place to come to could be all the
difference a family needs to accept a child. Or it could be all that a
child needs to feel enough love that they dont take their own life.
What a wonderful thing to be able to go to a home where there are
people just like you or just like your family to be able to connect with
another mom and share your sadness or fears in a safe environment. I
feel very lucky to have been able to go and work on something that I
think will be so important to a community.
I will go to the next volunteer day that they have, it is on September
3rd. This is the clean up day just a week before they open up. I very
much enjoyed this experience. I love working hard especially when you
can see your results at the end of the day. This is a subject that I see so
many people close to me struggling with and I think it will just continue
to impact our world. I am really grateful that I was able to have a small
part of something that I think will have a very big impact in the
community.
I have done a lot of volunteer work over my life and it has usually been
for those close to me or for a cause that is personal. This isnt personal
cause for me and does not have personal ties like my children. It was
really good for me to do something that I normally might not have
done. I liked being able to take my 15 year old daughter with me so
that she could see and understand the impact we can make with just a
couple of hours of our time.