My Nonprofit Reviews

How do I give All Hands six stars? Seven? I joined this NGO in Indonesia in the fall of 2009 and I keep getting my foot stuck in the door disaster after disaster because the people I found feel like home. I was going to stay in Indonesia for three weeks. I stayed there for four months, then Haiti for four months, and then Alabama for three months. I worked primarily as a demolition team leader, taking down damaged homes using sledgehammers, ropes, and homemade scaffolding. In other places, I helped on rubble teams, making immense piles of debris and clearing slabs so families could rebuild. Often scarred and bedraggled looking, our volunteers can best be described as "rabid." Their insatiable need to run with wheelbarrows in challenging conditions to serve complete strangers across the globe is inspirational. They work hard, play hard, often forget to bathe, and are some of the most selfless and compassionate people I've ever encountered. Their resourcefulness in the face of social, cultural, and logistical adversity amazes me. AH's uniqueness stems the organization's ability to channel that passion (skilled or unskilled, experienced or crispy green) into constructive projects fully integrated within a community through strong relationships with local public figures. Even globally-recognized NGOs commented in Haiti that All Hands had an outstanding relationship with the community, initiated by the sight of our volunteers eagerly clearing debris from properties. This group has built schools in places where there are no trees or cement and toilets in places where there is no plumbing. They've turned an abandoned cow pasture into a hotbed of manufacturing that will benefit hundreds of Haitians for years. They've provided potable water for the next five years to thousands in the midst of a cholera epidemic. They've redefined how domestic recovery efforts are organized technologically. Writing this review makes me so mad that I'm sitting in a Starbucks in Tennessee and not a bunk in the Philippines where, just last week, thirty volunteers ran to the IDP camp across the street in the middle of the night to dig ditches in a torrential rain storm.

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