NVAR Members Spruce Up Space with a Smile and Helping Hands
When Realtor® Luisa Sipple of RE/MAX Executives joined a missionary group to volunteer in Honduras after the damage left by Hurricane Mitch in the late 1990s, her group grabbed their shovels to dig ditches for fresh water lines to ravaged neighborhoods. When Rebuilding Together Alexandria (RTA) Board Member Vanessa
Rodriguez, of Re/EMAX Executives, asked Sipple to help refurbish one home for the April 30 National Build Day, Sipple knew participating would be a snap.
Rodriguez cast a wide net to enlist brokers and Realtors® in and around Alexandria who might help, after she learned that the NVAR Cares Committee, chaired by Susan Mekenney, approved her request for an NVAR Cares sponsorship. RTA is a nonprofit with a mission to preserve affordable housing. The build day is one of the largest nationwide days of community service.
About 600 volunteers joined RTA’s Build Day to help 36 elderly, disabled or military veteran home owners who needed help keeping up their homes. NVAR members spent that Saturday sprucing up the home – and spirits -- of Winifred Grimes of East Mason Avenue.
“I didn’t want to put down too many repairs,” Grimes said about applying to the RTA program, after much prodding from her children. Grateful for the day’s work from Team NVAR, she said, “It is wonderful. I am so pleased to have [NVAR Realtors®] here. I need them. It is not easy finding help to do these things. I do a lot of work myself. Some I just cannot do.”
Said Mekenney, “Realtors® are all about community. The stronger the community, the better the community, and the better it is for real estate. I think this event is great. We are putting our money where our mouths are by sponsoring and forming a team.”
RE/Max Executive’s David Boyd was tapped as house captain with experience that matched. “I thought [the RTA Build Day] was great,” he said while compiling his list of needed supplies. “I enjoy helping people. I have done a lot of volunteer work, but this is the first time in Virginia. I previewed this house to understand what [the owner] would like done.”
The sentiment of all Team NVAR volunteers echoed that of Coldwell Banker Broker Peter Rickert’s. “Service is part of being a real estate agent,” he said compassionately. “Give back to your neighbor first; it has to be local. I have been doing RTA for years. It is not Coldwell Banker. I know I am going to be a real estate agent for a long time. The better off Alexandria is, the better off we are as Realtors®. I have met so many great people. We need to make time to do that. I take possession of my community.”
Preserving affordable housing is a community effort and the team from NVAR did their part in aiding Ms. Grimes that day. It was proof that her Northern Virginia neighbors’ care. Many benefitted from a busy national build day: building friendships, building bridges, building homes for a better tomorrow.