National and Global Youth Service Day Report

Blog for national and global youth service day.

This year YouthStorm of New England ‘s designated social expression YS.com partnered with the largest service event in the world National & Global Youth Service Day to help raise the bar on youth volunteerism and help raise awareness of the enormous effort and input that youth volunteers contribute to their communities all around the world.
Millions of youth participated in the 19th Annual National & Global Youth Service Day on April 20-22, 2007 and the volunteers from YS.com were proud to be among that number.
The two service projects that we choose were very different from each other but made an equal impact.

On Fri April 20th YS partnered with IMEC (International Medical Equipment Collaborative), in our neighboring town of Andover Massachusetts. We chose this organization for one of our projects for several reasons. The first reason is that IMEC is literally helping to save the lives of the sick among us and helping to improve the standard of living for the poor all around the world. Also IMEC has an unwavering commitment to making sure that the equipment sent from their warehouse is received in a manner that the recipient’s dignity is preserved and encouraged. We also saw this as an enormous opportunity to show the world that the youth in our country and community are serious about engaging the world around us.

IMEC occupies a large portion of the old Lucent Technologies building in Andover Ma, They have many thousands of sq. feet of space where they house the new and used medical equipment that they receive from hospitals, nursing facilities, and individuals alike. The items range form wheel chairs, nursing linens, New needles, office furniture, MRI machines, and x-ray machines. Our task for that day was to organize a 3-4thousand square foot room! The room was filled with wheel chairs of all kinds, manual, electric, go-cart wheel chairs for children, physical therapy equipment, toilet chairs, crutches, and other items. Cathy out guide and instructor for the day let us know what her goals and expectations were and gave us an encouragement letting us know that we were really helping to get this equipment to those who are in desperate need of it, she shared a story with us of how a lot of children in the countries were this very equipment would be sent may spend most of their childhood inside a hospital room simply because the hospital could not afford the wheel chairs that are now just sitting in this very room. She let us know that the organization of these items brought them one step closer to those who needed them most. After this we had our fuel to tackle the job.

We decided that teams would be the best way to tackle this job. Team 1# tackled the toilet chairs, Team #2 tackle the physical therapy equipment, team #3 the wheel chairs, and then we all joined in together to sort out the misc. items from the space and in moving pallets of the damaged or un-repairable items to another part of the large complex. Most of us were wearing gloves, the items were still dirty and had not been cleaned yet (another day I suppose) I had gloves but lent them to one of the other girls. At first I kept thinking I hope I don’t cut my finger on one of these really dirty wheel chairs, and as I struggled to move the heavy electric ones who’s motors had not yet been replaced I remembered Cathy’s story about the children who may never have a chance to play outside or enjoy the world around them with out THIS wheel chair, and suddenly a cut on my finger seemed like such a small price to pay in exchange for a drastic improvement in child’s life.

Part Way through the day IMEC has a tradition of breaking and reiterating the fact that what we are doing is really making a difference. This time we had the pleasure of hearing the president and founder of IMEC Tom Keefe express his gratitude that we were there. He shared his many up-close and personal experiences with the people that have benefited from such labor as ours. He also shared how over the years his personal perspective on the assessments of what needed, and the installation of such items had been altered mostly due to the personal interaction with the patients, orphans, and medical staff of the locations. IMEC serves over 70 nations! After Tom’s encouragement we went back to work. At the end of the day I can say there was a collective awe among the teams when we stood back and saw the full transformation of the room. When we arrived this room was a mangled mess of mettle, it looked like an oversized rubber and ball (yeah like the king pee-wee herman used to have) only metal. And when we finished all the items were completely organized in there prospective categories and neatly lined the wall. We were all so thankful that we had a chance to participate in such a great project, and we all agreed that we must come back here to turn more mangled messes into hope.