Nashville Voluntourism Adventure

Lisa Davis Purcell, the Director of External Affairs for HandsOn Nashville

When Nashville flooded earlier this year, many people put aside their summer plans to visit America’s country music capital. Faced with a similar decision, I chose to spend a portion of my time in central Tennessee volunteering.

My opportunity was arranged by HandsOn Nashville, part of the HandsOn Network of resource centers which match nonprofit organizations with community needs and local volunteers.

“I love the diversity of non profit service. We partner with over 400 service and nonprofit agencies.” said Director of External Affairs, Lisa Davis Purcell, “From hunger to homelessness to animal welfare.”

some of the materials donated to HandsOn Nashville after the spring flood

Hands On likes to note that they are responsible for connecting ten percent of all Nashville area volunteers, creating 23 million dollars of economic impact every year.

The possibilities for me to contribute were organized on an electronic calendar at the HandsOn Nashville website.

The day I was in town, two food pantries needed distribution help. One flood relief building project needed assistance loading a truck.

I registered online and when I clicked on the appointment time, a dialogue box opened offering to email a volunteer leader who would be supervising on location.

Many people don’t realize how dialed in HandsOn was when the flood came. They simply activated their flood response plan!

“We have memorandums of understanding with the city if there are emergencies,“ Lisa said. “When there is an emergency, our boss is there at the city’s emergency command center.”

There are a number of such roadmaps available which create timetables for such expected volunteer response activities as sandbagging and as unexpected ones as securing prophylactic medicines for survivors.

Josh and Kim giving the camera some Volunteer 'tude

For my part, I reported to Betsy at a storage site in an up-and-coming Nashville neighborhood called The Gulch. Kim and Josh were already loading up boxes of joint compound.

The supplies needed to be moved to a second storage area. There were towers of rolling trays, rubber gloves, nails, screws, and plenty of hammers too.

It took a while to get the hand of manipulating the dolly, a task at which Kim was expert. Josh and I ferried supplies to her and she found space for them inside the trailer.

Lisa had observed that Ford Motor, Nike, and others provided material support during the flood. During a break in moving some of the building supplies Lowes donated, Josh and I stopped to appreciate the contributions of Budweiser to the flood relief effort by drinking some of their name-brand potable drinking water.

The King of Potable Waters? Yours Truly and Josh find out.

Who else pitched in notably? Ke$ha donated a concert. Taylor Swift made a direct donation. “Nashville is the buckle of the Bible belt, and a lot of our volunteers are from faith-based organizations.” Presbyterians, The Mormon Church and Scientologists made up some of the core of faith-based response.

Looking at that list of contributors, some who have very publicly used their wealth to challenge the gay community, I thought it was cool that through HandsOn we could all equally receive some non-politicized face time.

LGBT folks like myself can get so involved in our own cause we fail to call attention to the need for broader community-mindedness. Also, We can be reluctant to contribute if we feel we can’t be ourselves and blend in at the same time. I certainly would stick out among a crowd of Mormon relief workers.

The good news: when you are driving a truck or hoisting a ladder and putting your body on the line, very few people assess your affectional preference.