This week is National Volunteer Week! We appreciate all of our volunteers year-round, but this week provides an excellent reminder to say it loud and clear: thank you. We truly couldn’t do the work we do without our volunteers.

Every day of the year, volunteers help us fulfill our mission to provide housing and supportive services to formerly homeless men and women. Here are just a few things they do for Plymouth: 

• Provide meals and community-building opportunities for our residents.
• Provide one-on-one support to individual residents to help them stabilize in housing.
• Teach life skills classes.
• Support Plymouth’s community fundraising events.
• Provide behind-the-scenes administrative help.
• Take event photographs and resident portraits.
• Support creative projects and help our tenants connect with art.
• Help us beautify our buildings and keep them clean, comfortable, and welcoming for our residents.
• Help Plymouth stay connected to the greater community.
• And more!

In 2015, more than 400 volunteers donated thousands of hours of their time in service to Plymouth and our residents. We couldn’t be more thankful!

This week, we held our annual Volunteer Appreciation event, at which Plymouth staff were able to express our gratitude to Plymouth’s dedicated volunteers. Each year, we highlight the hard work of one volunteer by honoring them with our Volunteer of the Year award—and this year, we added a new Volunteer Group of the Year award. The recipients are:

• Volunteer of the Year: Tina Urso McDaniel has given many hours of her time to Plymouth for more than five years. Her work has touched Plymouth staff and tenants all across the agency, as her volunteer activities range from event and fundraiser preparation to work within our Essential Supply Center and, most recently, as the Hospitality Ambassador at the AL Humphrey House. As Hospitality Ambassador, Tina greets new residents and helps them adjust to life in an apartment. Her welcoming, friendly presence helps ease the transition out of homelessness and make our residents’ first few months in housing a success!
• Volunteer Group of the Year: F5 Networks‘ Gwen Bushey, Carol Cottrell, Jill Devine, Barb Hayes, Michelle MacLeod, Lori Seabright, Tom Thomas, and Kiriana Wilton. This fantastic group of coworkers have been providing regular community meals at the AL Humphrey House for well over a year. Their whole group is always friendly, smiling, and engaged with our residents. They make delicious, high-quality food—and there are always leftovers! They not only serve food, but they’ve also taken the time to learn the names of our residents, who look forward to their regular meals and the community atmosphere this fantastic team creates.

Our heartfelt thanks goes out to Tina, Gwen, Carol, Jill, Barb, Michelle, Lori, Tom, Kiriana and all of our 400+ volunteers. We look forward to the great work we’ll do together this year—and beyond!