Hello everyone!
On June 29th, 2017, I spoke to a group consisting of many members of the board of the Young Adult Volunteer Asheville site (Hands and Feet of Asheville), as well as many other friends/coworkers/etc. of the program. My speech focused on the work I have been doing at Homeward Bound and the lessons I have learned through my volunteer year of service.
Because of the positive reaction to my speech, I wanted to provide a written transcript to put it into another medium besides video/audio. Hopefully this will allow for easy quoting of the speech, as well as allow it to be shared in ways that would be difficult for video.
I will edit any mistakes, grammar errors, etc. Any numbers or stats specific to June 29th, 2017 will be underlined. I will add other various elements for embellishment.
If you would like to view the speech through the Homeward Bound Facebook page, click here
Hello, my name is Jeremy Glidden, and I work for the Welcome Home team at Homeward Bound. Through the Welcome Home program, I furnish homes for people who have just moved into housing from homelessness,
As of today, we have had 162 move-ins since I have been with Homeward Bound. 133 of those being clients from homelessness, the others being current Homeward Bound clients moving from one house to another. I do all of that, donation pickups, and if there are ever any cases of bed bugs or things that cause a client to have to move from their place to another, I will often go pick up all the furniture that is remaining there and take it to the landfill, which actually has a beautiful view. If you turn away from all the trash, it’s got this beautiful view of the mountains that is actually really really nice! But it smells really bad, too.
Throughout my life, I had been able to just work hard, and when I work hard, that’s enough. I really came into this year thinking: “Oh, I’ll do the same thing. I’ll come here, and wherever I get placed, I will work hard there, and that’ll be enough. I’ll do a good job just like I have my entire life, and that’ll be it!” But the main thing that made it not that simple was the fact that we had a couple of people drop out of the program right before it started. I got placed in Homeward Bound by myself, where in the past it has been two people. So… usually it’s easier to lift a couch when you have two people… dressers, anything like that… That was the first time that I was in this situation where everything that I did – my hard work – wasn’t actually enough.
I remember when we got into December, and we actually had 21 move-ins in the month of December – when I even took off a whole week for Christmas – so we were averaging seven move-ins per the three weeks we were there. I don’t know if you guys know the first Wallace and Gromit movie, but it reminded me very much of the scene where Gromit is on the toy train – the train representing the workload of Homeward Bound – and he’s placing down the train tracks as the train is going around and barely getting by.
We had a strategic meeting when we got back in January, where we said “what we’re doing is not enough, this is not okay”. All that pressure of the work that had to be done really put me in a situation where I had never been. I had never had all that pressure – never had that experience where even though I was doing everything I could, it still wasn’t enough because I was still just one person.
Three lessons sum up what I have learned at Homeward Bound:
The first is - efficiency is the key to everything. Since we’ve had a lack of manpower and amount of time to work – I only work 32 hours a week – there isn’t time to make mistakes. There isn’t time to have those moments where we aren’t doing what needs to be done. I think of a marathon runner – if the runner isn’t running towards the finish line, that’s not okay! We need to have that clear goal, know exactly what to do, and put all of our energy in that direction.
The second lesson - there is no time for burnout. There is no time to say “We can’t do this, I’m so tired, stop.” The people that got moved in last September and the people who moved in this June all deserve the same amount of energy and passion put into their move-in. Everyone deserves the same amount of time and effort. Throughout this year, there has been times where it has been a lot, it has been tough, but it has been possible with all the support from Homeward Bound – they said: “No, you keep going, you can’t burn out. You have a choice to either complain about things, or don’t.” That support really helped me to keep going throughout all of it.
The third is about slow and steady. Slow and steady is absolute crap – fast and steady is way better! That’s how we do it at Homeward Bound – fast and steady is always better than slow and steady. That is what it has been like the entire year, and what sums up my year of service with Homeward Bound. Ashley (my boss) let me know early on that slow and steady is not enough – you keep on moving, keep truckin’ along, and that’s what we have to do at Homeward Bound for everything to be successful.
Thank you.
Thank you to everyone who has supported me throughout my year of service with Homeward Bound. I wouldn't have been able to do it without that support. I'll be officially announcing my future plans in an upcoming blog post.
God bless!