Venice, FL – SYP – June 22-28, 2025

The Venice, Florida, leadership team was greeted on June 17 by Region 1 ROC David Kanagy, who had begun several days earlier setting up our headquarters for this new project, on the grounds of our host congregation.  This project is part of a hurricane rebuilding effort in the Venice area, which experienced several major storms in the past few years, the most recent being Milton in October, 2024.

The initial leadership team includes PD Mitch Kingsley (Ohio), OM Stan Kauffman (Michigan), Head Cook Valerie Kipfer assisted by her husband Lynn (Indiana).  We were joined later by Crew Leaders Bruce Kindy (Ohio), Ray Heisey (Pennsylvania) with his grandson Marc (Florida), and Long-term Volunteers Maik Hinz (Germany) and Mary Joyce Wise (New York) who also functioned as crew leaders.

Our first week’s volunteers were from Louisville, Ohio.  Seven adults accompanied nine youth from this congregation.  These volunteers were initially assigned to two repair projects in the Northport area, several miles south of Venice.  The Desheilds home requires repair from the studs outward.  Volunteers installed new insulation throughout and began hanging drywall.  On the McMillen project, the homeowner continues living in the house, boarding other people’s dogs in addition to her own.  One MDS volunteer’s assignment for each day was to keep the dogs occupied so others could work on outdoor brush removal, repairs and painting, indoor drywall hanging and finishing, and more painting.  On Thursday, some of the volunteers began a third project nearer to our base location in Venice.  Some of the major repairs on this house had already been completed.  They replaced soffit outdoors and installed closet shelves and painted indoors.

After a hard day’s work in mostly non-air-conditioned spaces and 90+ F. degree heat, the youth headed to the beach in the evenings to cool off, hunt for sharks’ teeth or play volleyball to burn off whatever excess energy remained, before heading to bed, then back to work early the next day.  Long-term staff saw the group off Saturday morning as they headed for a fast-food breakfast, then to the airport for their trip home.

For the week beginning June 29, we look forward to welcoming a new group of volunteers from Wisconsin to continue what the Ohio volunteers began, and probably add some of new projects that our United Way long-term recovery coordinator has on the to-do list.