I’m in New Orleans for a two-day meeting of the Employers Counsel Network, a group of leading labor and employment attorneys from across the country who write the state Employment Law Letters and Federal Employment Law Insider. One of our members suggested that while in New Orleans we should volunteer with Habitat for Humanity. You see, she had spent a day a couple of years ago helping to build a house in an area ravaged by Hurricane Katrina. She found the experience so rewarding that she encouraged our group to do the same.
ECN attorneys and MLSP president Dan Oswald and staff work on a sidewalk for Habitat for Humanity in New Orleans
So on Wednesday morning, the day before our meeting was set to begin, a group of 11 of us met in the lobby of our hotel at 7:00 a.m. Included in our band of volunteers was a husband-and-wife team from Hawaii. They were ready to set out for a day of hard work, despite the fact that it was 2:00 a.m. at home in Hawaii and they had arrived only the day before our little adventure.
We arrived in the Upper Ninth Ward ready to make a difference. We met with our team leader, Andrew, from Habitat for Humanity who informed us that we would be pouring a 71-foot-long sidewalk in the neighborhood. Everyone grabbed a shovel, and we dug out a section 71 feet long and the width of a typical city sidewalk. You’d think I’d know what that width is being an experienced sidewalk engineer, but I don’t have a clue. Next we had to build the cement forms that would hold our concrete in place. More than one joke was made about the number of attorneys it took to build a sidewalk, but by noon we had our forms in place.
Now the real work began. The afternoon was spent mixing 80-pound bags of concrete in wheelbarrows and pouring them into our forms. We were broken up into teams with the mixing taking place in four different wheelbarrows at once. By my count, we mixed more than 100 bags of concrete, and we did it the old-fashioned way — one bag at a time. It was hard work, but incredibly rewarding. And by 4:30 p.m., when our work day came to an end, we got our picture taken in front of the sidewalk we had spent the day constructing.
When I signed up to participate in our little work detail, I thought about what I could give to the residents of New Orleans who have been through so much. But by the end of the day, after toiling with my colleagues, I discovered that I really got a lot more from the experience than I gave. I’d recommend this type of volunteer activity to anyone, especially a group of coworkers.
There are two things that came from our day of volunteering in New Orleans.
First, the experience is incredibly rewarding in its own right. We had local residents stop by to thank us for the work we were doing to help their neighborhood. People in cars would stop as they drove by to offer their gratitude or just give us a honk and a wave. It really made you feel like you were doing something that people appreciate. And at the end of the day, we had something to show for our work that will serve the community for decades to come.
Second, it was a great team-building experience. Spend a day laboring in the sun, and you get to know people at a different level. The members of our group came to New Orleans from across the country. We had people from Massachusetts and Hawaii, and everywhere in between. We learned a lot about one another that day. We discovered that some of our members have unique talents. (Paul is great with a trowel!) Some of us had never met before that morning, but by day’s end we had a common bond and a better understanding of one another.
I gained so much from my day working with my colleagues for Habitat for Humanity, but most of all I learned that you get a lot when you try to give back. Pretty ironic.