Report from the Set of the DC-area Extreme Makeover Home Edition

My colleague Randy Bacon (Behrend Builders, Director) and I took a group of 18 volunteers to help out the Location Crew on the sets of ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. It was a day to remember. We arrived at registration where we all received our hard hats and bright blue Extreme shirts. We grabbed our tools and were off to work. (Read more!)

Extreme Makeover Home Edition Comes to the Washington DCJCC

Waddyaknow? They actually do get the house built in 7 days. I’m not sure I would have believed it before. With all of the lights and cameras for Extreme Makeover: Home Edition I assumed they cut and spliced their way through a month or so of building and just made it look like a week. But, a week it really is. Better than that, you can see for yourself if you join our group from the Washington DCJCC to volunteer at the Extreme Makeover work site in DC between August 22 – September 2. However, the registration deadline is Monday, August 17 at 4pm, so if you’re reading this after that, you’ll have to catch it when it airs.

What is the Washington DCJCC? Our Departing Avodahnik Figures it Out.

September 2nd, 2008 marked my first day of work at the Washington DC Jewish Community Center. Ironically enough, it also marked the first day I ever stepped foot into a JCC. I had no idea what the JCC was and didn’t really know what to expect. The fact that the building has a gym, a preschool, a café, a theatre, an art gallery, a library, a conference hall, and numerous offices all under one roof was all too overwhelming for me. After weeks and weeks of working here I still asked myself, what is this place?

Volunteer in DC – Unextreme Home Makeover

I think that Randy Bacon and Adam Levine have the best jobs at the Washington DCJCC. Don’t get me wrong, I like my job. More to the point, I couldn’t do their job. Randy is the director of Behrend Builders, our year-round shelter repair program, and Adam is our Fellow from Avodah: The Jewish Service Corps. Together they run volunteer projects for the Morris Cafritz Center for Community Service that perform needed improvements in homeless shelters, schools, low-income housing and community organizations all around the District of Columbia.

I am going to tell the following story, not because it is extraordinary, but because it is very, very ordinary. The kind of story that could be told any day of the week simply by asking Randy and Adam, “So, what are you up to?”

The referral came from Neighborhood Legal Services. Peggy turned to them when a city inspector showed up at her house citing her for various code violations, fining her, and giving her seven days to make the repairs. Peggy, a senior who earns less than $12,000 a year, didn’t have the money. And seven days later the inspector would show up once more, and fine her again for the repairs which Peggy was unable to make. The next week, same story. The bill kept getting larger. This went on until Peggy had accrued $9500 in fines. More than 75% of what her total income for the year is.
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Remembering Katrina

It has been three years since Hurricane Katrina made landfall in New Orleans, so we sent the following questions to Randy Bacon, a New Orleans native and director of the Behrend Builders Shelter Repair program at the Washington DCJCC. Randy led a group of volunteers to New Orleans in May/June of 2006.
Where were you when [...]