116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
Matthew 25 marks 10 years of repairing homes through Transform Week
Hundreds of volunteers worked this week on 37 different home repair projects in Cedar Rapids
The Gazette offers audio versions of articles using Instaread. Some words may be mispronounced.
CEDAR RAPIDS — Dozens of homes in Cedar Rapids stirred with green shirted volunteers this week. They carried power saws and paint brushes, fixing steps, painting fences, and cementing togetherness.
In the Time Check and Taylor neighborhoods, ravaged by the 2008 flood, repair and preservation are words often used, but rarely are there proper resources to make it happen.
Since 2016, Matthew 25, a faith-based Cedar Rapids nonprofit, has assisted hundreds of homeowners by gathering thousands of volunteers to assist with repair and maintenance projects through its annual Transform Week. This is its 10th year of community service.
“This is an example of what Jesus was talking about when he called on us to love our neighbors as ourselves,” Matthew25 Founder and Executive Director Clint Twedt-Ball said in a news release, “and it's amazing to watch how people in this community continue to turn out in bigger and bigger numbers every year.”
The program runs the last week of June each year, with this year tasking 375 volunteers with 37 different projects, ranging from structural repair and landscaping to covering a house with a fresh coat of paint. Groups varied in size, depending on the project and volunteer expertise.
Most of the projects are associated with a specific community group or sponsor. For example, a group of 30 volunteers from Transamerica’s internal audit team swarmed the property of Stephanie Gilbertson on Ellis Boulevard.
There, volunteers painted the 1915 house’s siding a light blue to match its color from years ago with supplies paid for by Transamerica and a list of other sponsors. Leftover funds will be pooled to hire contractors for more skilled labor once the week ends, Matthew 25 Neighborhood Building Senior Director Brenner Myers said.
However, Myers was quick to add, money going to contractors alone won’t result in as much positive community change as Transform Week.
“The money that they donate goes to buy the supplies, so they [the homeowner] don’t have to pay for the supplies, they get the labor volunteered,” he said. “It would absolutely be not possible without volunteers coming out.”
Gilbertson, who has lived in the house for 43 years, watched the volunteers Thursday and recalled a similar scene 16 years ago. Following the 2008 flood, volunteers from the United Methodist Church helped repair the home, which had to be gutted.
In 2009, the volunteers put their signatures on a sign to mark the work they’d done at the house. Over the years, visitors and volunteers returning to the house added more signatures. Now, Gilbertson has a new sign, already adorned with names of the Matthew 25 volunteers who gave her house a new look this week.
Gilbertson, said she and her husband and their daughter, who is autistic, will remain in the house. She hopes to keep it in the family in perpetuity, for her daughter.
The volunteer experience
Every morning this week, volunteers huddled in the Groundswell Event Space at 9 a.m. to celebrate the day’s work and to pray. From there, they departed to begin work at houses, each marked by Transform Week yard signs.
The homes are selected through an application process. Early each year, Matthew 25 sends out flyers that invite residents to apply for help. Homeowners who make 80 percent of the area median income or less are eligible for Transform Week.
Woodworkers and experienced contractors reconstructed parts of the front steps and back deck of a house on Eighth Street, working swiftly as the sun raced around to come up behind them. Luckily, they finished still in the shade.
Matthew 25 provided sweat-wicking headbands, water and food this week so volunteers could work in the heat each day. They also battled delays caused by rain.
“The weather has always been touch and go, in this week there’s no difference,” Myers said. “We had to shuffle projects. Stuff like this, even if it only rains for a couple hours, now it’s all wet. You can’t really paint.”
There are many reasons why volunteers show up to do the work.
Doug Gire, a fifth-year Transform Week volunteer from Marion and a member of Christ Community Church, volunteers to help those who have less. He has traveled on two mission trips to Haiti, and wishes people could see the lives of the less fortunate and be so moved to waste less and help out.
In its news release, Matthew 25 said the work being done this week is not only financially beneficial, but constructive for the community.
“There’s no way to fully thank volunteers for taking time out of their lives to help someone they’ve never met,” homeowner Belinda Herman said in the release. “They’re helping a stranger. That means everything.”
Comments: 641-691-8669; evan.watson@thegazette.com
Daily Newsletters