Self-made businessman Dave Lindsey has motivated thousands of his workers and their families to take part in international community service projects – and thousands more from other companies to serve their own communities.
Dave Lindsey
Lindsey, of Indianapolis, says people were born to serve, and that businesses – as groups of people – should do the same. In 1998, Lindsey founded a small home services company, DEFENDER Direct, which he built into a thriving national corporation with more than 2,000 employees. Over the years, Lindsey has fostered a spirit of volunteer service, by offering a variety of employee incentives and creating the nonprofit Companies With a Mission.
Since 2007, DEFENDER employees have traveled to Mexico and other countries to help build houses in poor communities through Homes of Hope, a program of Youth With a Mission. More than 5,000 employees have worked on Homes of Hope builds, and this year DEFENDER celebrated completion of its 200th house. Lindsey, his wife, Jess, and their children have personally participated in 11 home builds.
In 2011, Lindsey launched the Super Service Challenge, a program that allowed DEFENDER employees to form teams and compete through volunteer work for a share of $1 million in prize money, awarded to charities chosen by the winning teams. The competition proved so popular that Companies With a Mission eventually opened it to companies nationwide. The three-month Super Service Challenge last year attracted the support of New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees, whose foundation partnered with Companies With a Mission.
In three years, more than 15,000 employees from more than 1,000 companies have performed 100,000 hours of volunteer service for 1,200 charities through the competition, and $3.1 million has been awarded to the charities of winning teams. Winners are chosen by an independent panel and public voting.
Lindsey believes that DEFENDER benefits from its own volunteer service program. His company motto is, “Businesses don’t grow, people do!” and he believes the money and time invested in service comes back to the company tenfold through the growth and development of its employees. He sees the Super Service Challenge as particularly valuable to the company culture.
“Empowering employees to choose where they wanted to serve, we encountered a shift from a giving company to a company of givers,” says Lindsey.
DEFENDER employees are offered four paid “giving days” per year for volunteer work in addition to their standard paid time off, and Lindsey estimates that 90 percent of his employees have taken the opportunity to volunteer.
Lindsey says that of all the charitable missions in which he has participated – including creating a special program at the Indianapolis Boys Club Girls Club, volunteering with his family at an orphanage in Uganda and traveling with his family to Taiwan as part of a program to educate diabetic children – his favorite has been working on home builds.
“Everyone needs to do it,” he says. “The experience will change your heart, your kids’ hearts and your family’s vision of the world.”
Grace O’Brien
While many 16-year-olds are focused on getting a driver’s license and surviving high school, Grace O’Brien is focused on serving others – helping deaf children in developing countries hear.
Grace O’Brien, center, tends to a young Mexican boy
named Jesus – with his mother, behind him, and an
audiologist – as Jesus’ hearing aid ear molds set.
In the summer of 2012, when she volunteered at a theater program for deaf children, Grace saw the difference hearing aids could make.
“I watched as the children gained self-confidence in themselves as they developed listening and speaking skills needed to assimilate with their peers, and be successful in school and life,” Grace recalls.
She did some research and found that two-thirds of the world’s 278 million people with hearing loss live in developing countries. These children and their families cannot afford hearing aids, which can cost $1,000 to $4,000, let alone the batteries that must be changed weekly.
“In developing countries the deaf are not a priority in health – they’re outcasts,” Grace says.
Grace O’Brien, right, shares a lighthearted moment with
Betty, a Mexican girl who had just received her hearing aid.
So Grace founded Ears for Years Inc., a nonprofit that supplies solar-powered hearing aids to deaf children in the developing world. With the help of her older sister, Kate, her family and her community, Grace has grown the Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif., nonprofit into a success.
To eliminate the cost of replacing batteries, Ears for Years purchases solar-powered hearing aid kits, developed by SolarEar in Brazil. The kits, which include hearing aids and batteries, cost $100, a fraction of the cost of hearing aids in the United States. And the batteries, recharged by the sun, last two to three years.
So far Grace and Ears for Years has fitted more than 50 hearing aids on children around the world with another 100 planned within the next year. Grace also tries to meet the children who receive hearing aids. She has already been to Mexico and Nicaragua with hopes of traveling to Haiti next.
In order to raise money for the hearing aid kits Grace started an annual clothing drive at her school where all the clothing gets sold to consignment shops. In addition, the Ears for Years club she founded at her high school holds bake sales and other programs to raise money and teach others about what deaf children in impoverished countries face. Grace has also begun working with local stores that donate a percentage of their proceeds to Ears for Years.
Grace hopes to see Ears for Years clubs form at other schools. She says, “Success for me would be to change people’s lives one hearing aid at a time.”
The Brantley Family
Members of the Brantley family provide fire protection and injury prevention programs for the Cedar Crossing community near Lyons, Georgia.
Cedar Crossing is a rural community. Before the Brantley family help start the volunteer fire department, there was no fire service nearby. The closest fire department was a little over 18 miles away in Lyons. Most of the time, property and lives were lost well before firefighters arrived. Residents of Cedar Crossing often had to pay higher insurances rates because there was not a fire department in the vicinity.
The Brantley family help start the fire department with one donated fire truck from Lyons. Although it was old and in much need of repair, it assisted with putting out fires. However, they did not have a fire station to store the donated truck. Members of the Brantley family help coordinate fundraisers to raise $10,000 to start building a fire station; they even got a local farmer to donate land to build the station.
Jim Boulet
Two years ago, when the Second Harvest Food Bank in New Orleans announced it was facing a food shortage, one of the first to answer the call for help was 84-year-old Jim Boulet, a retired shrimp boat captain, sugar cane grower, and crawfish farmer from Larose, La. Boulet had experience growing turnips in his small family garden and decided to convert the fields behind his house into a giant turnip farm to help feed the hungry. He planted more than 4 million turnip seeds in 2012. By March of 2013—the end of the growing season—Boulet and his family had harvested and donated 15,000 pounds of turnips to Second Harvest for use in soups and other meals.
That first year, Boulet also gave 3,300 pounds of turnips to the local sheriff to aid a food program for shut-ins and 1,300 pounds to a community center in Larose.
In 2014, Boulet, his family and volunteers—including girls from a local high school and former Peace Corps members—have already picked 35,000 pounds of turnips, and Boulet expects the total harvest to reach more than 50,000 pounds.
“You don’t harvest turnips all at once,” explains Boulet. “You pick them three times, about a month apart, starting in December. Our first year was an experiment. We’ll exceed it this year by more than 50 percent, and I think we’ll have another 50-percent increase next year.”
The farm’s output has been so great that Boulet can no longer deliver all the turnips in the family pick-up truck. Instead, Second Harvest sends a 16-wheeler after each picking to collect the crop. The quantity is much appreciated, as Second Harvest provides about 90 million meals each year to 250,000 people in southern Louisiana.
Boulet personally works four-hour days throughout the six-month season of tilling, planting, and harvesting. If it seems like an extraordinary feat for someone of his age, consider this: Three years ago, Boulet was nearly killed in a car accident. His recovery was long and painful, and he still walks with pins in his legs. He says that when his health and vitality returned, he was inspired to give back.
“Many people helped me to recover,” says Boulet. “When I heard that Second Harvest needed food, the turnip project was a way to show my appreciation, and the work helps my body to get stronger. It’s exercise, it’s medicinally good for the mind and it’s special because it’s helping others.”
Boulet and his wife have six children and 12 grandchildren, and he emphasizes that they have been essential to the success of the turnip farm.
“My family has helped with everything I’ve done, on the shrimp boat and the crawdad farm,” says Boulet. “Now, with the turnips, there are even more people helping—grandchildren and in-laws. Any number of them show up whenever they have the time, and it’s a very rewarding feeling. They join in because they understand the problems facing the weak members of society, and I think that they’re very rich people for doing it.”
Attorney Eugene Fitz-Ritson
Attorney Eugene Fitz-Ritson of Miramar, Florida volunteers as a leadership coach for Family and Friends Connection, a nonprofit organization made up of volunteers who provide resources to support the health and educational aspirations of the Miramar community.
Ritson began offering his services to the organization when he noticed community members were struggling to maintain viable businesses because they lacked the necessary management skills. Thus, Ritson created curriculum, developed a management-training program, and dedicated his time and resources to ensure local entrepreneurs received much needed training to grow a successful business. Ritson’s training program became so successful that even people from outside the community frequented the free workshops each week.
Ritson has trained well over 100 community members and others from nearby areas. People continue to have access to the free training material that he makes available through Family and Friends Connection. Ritson’s volunteer project began as a small organizational in-house training project, but it has evolved into a well-known source of free training for everyone.
Tasha Chapman
Allie Thiesse
Allie Thiesse of Yankton, South Dakota is an advocate for issues affecting young people and animals.
Thiesse, a junior at Yankton High School, has actively participated and coordinated service opportunities with the Humane Society and organizations benefiting youth since the fifth grade.
Thiesse’s passion for helping youth and animals has motivated her to engage in fundraising initiatives and letter writing campaigns to urge legislators to change laws, which do not prevent the cruel treatment of animals. She took her advocating a step further to educate her peers by inviting Humane Society representatives to speak to her class about the ramifications of animal cruelty.
In regards to her passion for youth, Theisse founded the Walter’s Warriors group to offer support to a fellow classmate who is undergoing his second battle with cancer. Through the initiative, Theisse implemented a t-shirt campaign and raised approximately $7,500 to assist the family with medical costs.
Additionally, she teamed up with her peers, community members, and ART FEEDS to deliver over 40 pounds of art supplies to youth in Oklahoma affected by the deadly tornadoes that devastated the region during the spring of 2013.
Theisse has been serving others for a little over six years now. She plans to continue to fuel her passion and develop her talents for serving others by attending leadership seminars and reaching out to youth in hopes of demonstrating the importance of community involvement.
Selina Smith-Budinger
Kevin Turnage
For more than 33 years, Kevin Turnage of Millington, Tennessee has volunteered his time to assist others by helping them to prepare and recover from emergencies.
Turnage's service includes volunteering as an American Red Cross trainer to instruct others in babysitting, first aid, and cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). Through the American Red Cross, Turnage has also served as the captain of a Disaster Action Team, which is a team of local volunteers who provide important on-the-scene services to disaster victims and first responders.
In addition, Turnage became a nurse and volunteers for his local Medical Reserve Corp, an organization that provides residents of both medical and non-medical backgrounds with a way to help their communities during a public health emergency.
Over the years, Turnage has volunteered with a variety of organizations and is always letting others know about the joy he receives from volunteering. Through his service in the area of disaster, he has saved people after tornadoes stuck their communities from collapsed structures and taught countless adults and children lifesaving skills and emergency preparedness
Bailey Williams
As a third grader, bullies tormented Bailey Williams because of her size. The bullying became such a problem that her parents had to move her to another school when the school she attended failed to address the issue.
Now a fifth grader, Williams has become involved with I'm Bully Free, a national program that raises awareness in schools that have declared a commitment to creating and maintaining a bully free, safe and secure environment. Williams serves as an ambassador for the program. As an ambassador, Williams speaks out against bullies and stops bullies if she sees them taunting other students. She gives powerful speeches advocating against bullying to youth and adults at schools and pageants.
In addition to her duties as an ambassador for I'm Bully Free, Williams is a model for volunteer service at her school. Often, Williams arrives at school early to read to kindergarten and first-grade students. She is activity involved in her school’s Green Team that collects recycle bins and sorts through the items. In the summer, Williams visits with senior at Carpenters Home Manor, which provides assisted living and nursing care in Lakeland, Florida.
