Rebuilding Together Warner Robins – Partnering with organizations to help the community

Rebuilding Together Warner Robins and World Changers have joined hands this week to repair homes in the Warner Robins area, as well as rebuild a sense of genuine humanity.

World Changers is a Christian organization that partnered with its parent company, Lifeway, in their outreach program that gives middle school, high school and college aged students the opportunity to participate in mission work through constructions projects. These students come from all over the United States and travel to different locations to work on construction projects and serve communities.

Rebuilding Together Warner Robins and World Changers together selected 5 homes in need of repairs with the addition of Genesis Joy House, a shelter for homeless female veterans that also received services. These five home homeowners had previously filled out their application for selection through Rebuilding Together and received the volunteer services of World Changers volunteers this week. World Changers Construction Coordinator, Terry McNair, holds the students responsible for their work and encourages them to serve without too much of his own involvement. He stated that it was the students’ opportunity to serve.

“I refuse to do the work, that’s how I operate,” McNair stated. “It’s their trip, it’s their part in this and so they need to do this.”

Rebuilding Together works with World Changers in gathering funds to support these projects year after year. Most of the funding is found through grants, foundations, corporations, private donations and churches willing to donate to the organization’s efforts in middle Georgia. Rebuilding Together provides the funding for the projects, and World Changers provides the labor and skillset to get the job done.

The goal of the partnership between Rebuilding Together and World Changers is to reinstate a sense of safety and dignity by repairing the residences of low-income homeowners. Joanne Alford-Robinette works as an administrative assistant and as a grant writer for Rebuilding Together and is passionate about the good that the organization is doing for the community year after year.

“We’re a nonprofit. Our mission is to repair homes, revitalize communities, and rebuild lives. We do that by serving low-income seniors, disabled and veteran homeowners. All the work that we do is at no cost to the homeowners,” said Robinette.

Rebuilding Together makes an effort to assist those most in need and make assistance for them most readily available when they can. Those that are in need of home repairs go through a simple application process in which Rebuilding Together assists them as they go through the steps of qualifying for volunteer services.

“They come in and apply and go through the qualification process. We come out and look at the homes and do what we call an inspection to see what we’re going to do based on their need and what we see that they may not know about,” Robinette said. “Then we start going out and looking into putting together teams to do the work and we create a budget to go with each one of the homes. Then we start doing the work.”

This week, one of the teams from World Changers was working on extensive repairs for Bernice Thorp, a resident of Warner Robins for 33 years. It was her and her husband’s goal to see their home receive these services, so seeing the work be done by so many willing hands was awe inspiring. Thorp was so very grateful and appreciative of everyone involved in repairing her home.

“It is blessed,” said Thorp. “It is wonderful and I’m thankful and I appreciate everyone that has had a hand in it. It’s been something that my husband and I wanted before he passed, and it is a dream come true for me.”

Since their work began in 1996, Rebuilding Together Warner Robins has assisted in repairing over 1,115 homes in the area and has touched many lives in the process as well. Through partnerships like the one they have with World Changers, projects like these become opportunities to not only serve but reach into the heart of the community and rebuild it; one home at a time.