More Than 100 Volunteers Turn Out for Community Cares Day

As they have every year since 2003, volunteers the fanned out across Lincoln County on Saturday, Sept. 13 for Community Housing Improvement Project Inc.’s annual neighbor-helping-neighbor event, Community Cares Day.

Held annually on the second Saturday of September and dedicated to CHIP’s mission of keeping neighbors warm, safe, and dry, Community Cares Day involves teams of volunteers assigned to prequalified home improvement projects on behalf of homeowners who are unable to do the necessary work themselves due to illness, infirmity, or financial need.

Community Cares Day volunteers are not required to have special skills to participate as each team is assigned a leader with experience and applicable skills.

According to CHIP Executive Director Brittany Gill, more than 100 adults volunteered this year, supported by dozens of students from Lincoln Academy and Medomak Valley High School. She credited the large turnout, in part, to the perception of a post-COVID era

“People are realizing, like, ‘Oh, we can do things again, and we want to be part of community things going on,’ and so people are coming out,” Gill said.

The volunteer efforts of Community Cares Day are supported throughout the year by a smaller handful of volunteers who work with CHIP as needed, Gill said

The day began at 7:30 a.m. with coffee, introductions, and a blessing at The Second Congregational Church of Newcastle before the teams of volunteers headed out to their individual sites.

This year, 16 projects were assigned on 15 job sites scattered among eight towns in eastern and central Lincoln County. Assignments ranged from general yard work, processing firewood, carpentry repairs, and painting, to installing siding, mobile home skirting, and building at least two handicapped-accessible ramps and window inserts to improve winter heating efficiency.

In Jefferson, Michael Hope led a team of Lincoln Academy students and adults stacking firewood. Hope praised lumber manufacturer N.C. Hunt for its support, saying the company reserved part of its Jefferson facility to store a portion of CHIP’s firewood stockpile.

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Last winter CHIP gave away about 50 cords of donated wood, Hope said, adding the total was a new high for the organization.

“Most of our work will start next month, when the deliveries are starting,” Hope said.

In Whitefield, a small team of adults under the direction of CHIP board member and team leader Randy Domina installed a ramp at a home. Domina’s crew included a friend from graduate school, Elizabeth Schwartz, who made the trip from her home in Rhode Island to participate.

“These guys are my good friends,” Schwartz said. “Brittany, who’s running the show, is a good friend as well, so it’s fantastic. It’s just such a lovely community in general. It’s my way of giving back in this very minute way.”

In Bristol, Jefferson-based contractor Rick Campbell and his nephew Mike Campbell spent the day repairing a deck behind Barbara Begin’s home on Benner Road. According to Rick Campbell, the side of the deck resting against the side of the house was badly rotted and needed new strapping, supports, and deck surface installed.

“This program is amazing,” Begin said. “These people are just wonderful. Without them a lot of us would be out of luck.”

Begin said she is living on a fixed income and has mobility problems. She does what she can but she does not the physical and financial wherewithal to undertake major renovation projects. The Campbells’ help was badly needed and much appreciated, she said.

“Everything just gets so overwhelming because it gets so out of hand,” Begin said. “Yes, we can’t move and do as much, and stairs are a real bad thing for me. So I get my stand and try to sit down all the time, but I still make progress. I’m just really slow.”

A couple doors down from Begin’s Benner Road home, an emotional Manola Carter watched as volunteers installed a new exterior door for basement of the home she shares with her husband, Eugene. Earlier in the day, volunteers removed more than 7,000 pounds of refuse from her property. The effort included cutting up and removing a 275-gallon oil drum.

Carter said she and her husband of 40 years spent almost two years in Virginia for health reasons before returning to their home in June 2024. While they were gone their home was vandalized and the property used as a dump site.

“They smashed our glass sliding door,” Carter said. “That’s what’s being replaced. They took a lot of stuff and they left a lot of stuff. We’ve had beds left here; tables, chairs, stuff dumped here … So before we started with my house, we took and we did piles. We kind of kept it contained and thank God, because when they came it was like (take) that pile, that pile, and that pile. All of it.”

Carter credited her neighbor Corey Poland for signing her up for CHIP assistance, something she said she probably would not have done for herself.

“We were always on the giving end,” she said. “Never on the receiving end because, you know when it comes to saying I need something, I need help, I don’t know how to go about that so it’s other people, like neighbors, that’ll say, ‘Wow, we got an organization,’ and I’m like, ‘Yeah, let’s do it.’”

Poland said his own family benefitted from Community Cares Day years ago and now he is happy to give back.

“I knew CHIP Cares Day was coming up, so I nominated her to have her property cleaned up of the trash,” Poland said. “I don’t know if Britney or whoever noticed the back door. It was dilapidated, so we’re installing that. It’s been a lot of work. It’s been kind of hectic, but it’s gone pretty well.”

For more information about CHIP, go to chipinc.org or call 380-9276.