Project Possible – Making good things happen!

Project Possible working together in collaboration and partnership with John Stavros and his team from Bio-Management NW have made substantial progress in bringing this severely vandalized West Seattle home back into a safe and inhabitable condition. From July to mid October of 2009, the Bio-Management NW team had cleaned out and decontaminated the majority of the interior spaces of the home that had been trashed. Having completed this portion of the project, John’s team set their sights on coordinating with the woman from West Seattle about restoring her bedroom which had substantial water damage to the ceiling, insulation, walls, floor and subflooring and addressing the growth and build up of toxic mold in this room.

Project Possible through its volunteers had been working on the exterior landscaping and maintenance of the yard around the home during this same time period. The patio and porch that she so enjoyed sitting on were cleared of debris, swept and washed down. Vines, bushes and trees that had for years overgrown the sides and roof of the home were cut back in order to keep them from damaging the house any further.  A trailer and truckload of yard debris were removed from the property.  This exterior work allowed the her to be able to walk freely around the perimeter of her home once again without incident, hindrance or risk of injury.

The progress of the work being performed to restore the home was unfolding at an accelerated pace.  At the rate the work was being completed, it was more than likely that she would be able to come home for Christmas – which would be a dream come true for her. Her mood from the time I had first met her had steadily been improving with each little step that was completed in helping her put her home back together. She began to see an end to her dilemma.

Because I manage the Project Possible program of Just Ask on a part time basis in addition to my 40 hour a week job as a Facilities Coordinator for the Ascentium Corporation (www.ascentium.com), I will occasionly receive phone calls concerning inquiries, ongoing projects and or requests for assistance while I am at work. I received a call about mid October on a Thursday afternoon which at first struck me as odd. A friend of the woman in Seattle we were helping called me and at first I couldn’t understand why. She seemed to know an awful lot more than I was comfortable with about the project, the woman and me than I did about her or why she was calling.

I had begun to move the conversation in a direction to protect the privacy and confidentiality of the woman we were helping and the details of her situation when the caller then revealed the nature of her call to me. The West Seattle woman we were helping had passed away several days before. I was stunned. I had been aware that she had not been in the best of health and that she was awaiting a pacemaker implant which had been put off and rescheduled several times while the doctors awaited improvement in her overall health. But apparently her health situation was far more serious than she let on.

The West Seattle woman we were helping was always so very friendly and outgoing despite her serious health challenges and the embarrassment and shame she felt about her situation. She was liberal with her thanks and praise for the work being performed on her behalf. But as a result of how she felt, she did not share much about her home situation with the people around her who were the closest to her. We continually reassured her that the condition of her home from having been burglarized and vandalized was not her fault and that it was outside of her control. Those who did this to her were the ones who had embarrassed themselves by treating her in so shameful a manner.

I offered my deepest sympathy to the woman who had called to tell me about her friend’s passing. The caller made it a point to inform me that in conversations she had with her West Seattle friend (who had apparently shared with her some things about her situation) that she always spoke very highly about Project Possible and John Stavros of Bio-Management NW. She relayed to me that her friend had confided to her that she once again had found reason to hope for a better outcome for her current life situation because of our involvement with her. She recounted how her friend on a few occasions had broken down in tears out of sheer relief and gratitude for the help that she had now finally been getting.

I thanked the woman for her call and I asked to be kept informed of any planned memorial service for this woman from West Seattle. I in no way have any regrets about having taken on this project nor any hint of disappointment about the outcome of the situation we worked so hard to help her out with. This dear woman had a legitimate need. Up to the point we became involved in her life and with her particular problem, she had been referred and rerefered to other organizations for help without success, been scolded for living alone at her age as well as threatened with a visit from the county health inspector by the authorities, continued to have her home repeatedly broken into and damaged by a multitude of offenders and was reduced to sleeping on a borrowed couch at a friend’s house for over a year while she tried to determine what to do about her predicament.

“¹² Unrelenting disappointment leaves you heartsick, but a sudden good break can turn life around.” – Proverbs 13:12 (The Message)

 The Project Possible program of Just Ask is committed to making good things happen in order to provide people in dire need with a sudden good break in their unrelenting disappointment thereby helping to turn life around for them. I am indebted to the pro bono services of Mr. John Stavros and his team from Bio Management NW. My heartfelt thanks goes out to all of you who responded with your kind and generous offers to help in some way with this need after seeing my initial blog post about this situation that was carried by the West Seattle Blog. You also are true unsung heroes whose compassion is inspiring to me. Though this particular West Seattle woman’s story of suffering ends here, there are many other people in need that our program is continually encountering each month.

Many of them are in situations as bad or worse and they also are in desperate need of help. They often lack the financial, social and physical resources to take care of their own situations by themselves. And far too often they find themselves in a seemingly endless loop of referral and rereferral to various places or stuck on waiting lists for service and or being judged for the circumstances they are in but with no one to actually step forward to help them out. Our desire is to intervene in this cycle by stepping forward to help by doing something about these situations that we become aware of.  If you have the similar desire to make a difference in your community, in the lives of those needing help, we invite you to contact us about participating in a project.

“Like cold water to a weary soul is good news from a distant land.” – Proverbs 13:12 (NIV)  Because we believe this to be true, we will be posting other success stories from previous completed projects as well as current projects in the near future to spread some good news around.

What if you were in your early 50’s, living in your own home that you bought 15 years ago, on which you are still making mortgage payments, and you suffered a stroke near the end of the year almost 2 years ago? You had to leave your home for medical treatment and once you were able to be released from doctor’s care you went to stay with a friend while you recuperated because you are single and you have no children or other family in the area that you can turn to for help. What if shortly after this you became very ill on top of the stroke and this kept you from going back to living in your home for almost a year?

What if in that year you were out of your home the roof was damaged by a tree which led to water getting into your bedroom destroying the ceiling and generating toxic mold in the walls? What if in that same time it was broken into by having the front door kicked in, it was then burglarized of all your valuables and personal possessions and then vandalized/trashed so severely that it rendered your home uninhabitable because it was now a hazard to your health from both the toxic mold and the unsanitary conditions created by people using it as a combination crash pad, drug house and public toilet? What if these conditions then created a problem with rats getting into your home?

What if you called the police about your home having been repeatedly broken into and vandalized, which continued to occur all the while you were out of your home, and you were then lectured by them about living alone as an older adult and about having “abandoned” your home which created the problem in the first place?  What if they told you that there wasn’t much they could do because it was just transients living in your home and they would stop coming around after you moved back in?

What if the help the police did offer was to provide you with the phone number for Senior Services which then led to a referral to a bio-hazardous cleanup business? What if you called the business and they came out to perform an assessment of your home and they informed you that it would cost you $25,000.00 to have them clean up and restore your home? What if when you contacted your home insurance carrier to find out about filing a damage claim and they told you that they were not accepting any financial responsibility for this claim due to some contractual loophole in the fine print of your policy?

You’re stuck. You own a home but you are not able to go back to living in it due to the unsafe and unhealthy conditions inside of it. The trees and vegetation on your property around your home by now have become overgrown to the point that they are engulfing and damaging your home further. You don’t have the means financially to do much to get it taken care of so that you can return to it. What can you do? Where can you turn? Who can you call for help?

This is why the Project Possible program of the 501c3 nonprofit organization Just Ask was created – to assist the poor, weak and vulnerable in our communities when their backs are against the wall in circumstances like these and when they have no one else that they can turn to for help even though they have asked and continue to ask for it. This program specializes in taking on the larger, more complex projects like this one to insure that people in these kinds of situations can get the help that they so desperately need.

One local bio-hazardous clean up business owner contacted by the Project Possible program of Just Ask, upon hearing about the particular individual in these very circumstances, offered to take on cleaning out the home for this person pro-bono. Mr. John Stavros of Bio-Management Northwest and his team have been working diligently since late July and throughout the month of August cleaning out and decontaminating the interior of the home. He has also offered to perform additional reconstructive work to restore damaged areas of the interior including addressing the toxic mold in the bedroom and the repair of the walls, ceiling and roof.

Project Possible, in addition to having invited Bio-Management Northwest to participate in this project, has organized teams of volunteer teams to come out and to work on cutting back the bushes, trees and other vegetation around the outside of the home. 2/3rds of landscaping around the home’s exterior has been completed on this project but there is still more to do. The current needs are for the donated/discounted use of a commercial grade wood chipper/brush grinder that can accept 6-9” diameter branches and a truck to haul the chippings away in addition to 10-15 volunteers who can help to complete trimming the vegetation/trees and removing the brush/branches. There is also the need for people who are contractors both home and electrical and or who have carpentry skills who are willing to donate their expertise and time and a need for dontated building materials such as – lumber, flooring, roofing materials, drywall and the like.

For more information or if you are interested in helping out with this project in some way, you can reach the Project Possble program of Just Ask by email at Scottb@projectpossible.com or by phone at 425-985-4510.

One of our programs is called Project Possible for which I am the Xtreme Dream Teams Project Manager. This program specifically seeks to connect hands-on volunteer support of a non-medical nature with seniors, adults living with disabilities/serious injury(ies)/chronic or long-term illness(es) and other vulnerable individuals and families in the Puget Sound region who are living on fixed / limited incomes. These are folks with little or no relational support networks and who find themselves in need of assistance.

Our mission is to help these individuals and families to maintain their independence within their own homes or place of residence. The goal is to provide assistance with various large scale projects of a home maintenance nature e.g. deep cleaning/clutter removal, minor home repair, landscaping/yard work, moving and hauling debris away that require greater coordination of effort, which they are either unable to afford or they are physically unable to manage by themselves. The scope of their need is one that requires more manpower and resources (supplies/tools/equipment) than they have available to complete the work that is being requested. This is where Project Possible comes in!

An expanded network of volunteers from surrounding communities, who are the lifeblood of our workforce, perform tasks like those mentioned above at the homes and on the property of these seniors, adults with disabilities-illness and other vulnerable individuals and families in need.  These volunteers participate as members of dream teams that have been formed to tackle specific categories of need like clutter removal (Team DeepSweep), yard care (Team Green), moving (Team Local-Motion), miscellaneous tasks (Team Handy) etc.

 At Project Possible, a program of Just Ask, we are building and gearing up our infrastructure to be able to put our “project in a box” concept into effect – providing everything needed at a project site for volunteers to perform the work requested at no cost to the recipient. We believe that all projects are possible; therefore we think in terms of “how we will” provide help and not “why we can’t.”