On June 11 Plano West Rotary Club (PWRC) volunteers arrived bright and early at the Bed Start parking lot across from Plano’s Custer Road United Methodist Church to deliver furniture to local families in need.
This was our club’s eighth time to volunteer with Bed Start, a nonprofit organization that delivers mattresses, bed frames and other large household furnishings to Dallas and Collin County residents in poverty or crisis. These families often include single parents with children, CPS cases, military veterans, domestic abuse survivors and immigrants.
On this particular Saturday PWRC brought 11 volunteers and served a total of 37 hours. Our crew picked up furniture from a few households in Plano and delivered it to households in north Dallas.
Jennifer Shertzer led the efforts as this project’s coordinator for PWRC, and was joined by Rotarians Brett Moore, Michael Casavant, John Stafford and Julia Stafford. Community volunteers Luke Shertzer, Michelle Hawkins, David Rankin, Everett Rankin and Pryce Rankin also joined the crew.
Brett brought his six-year-old son, Alexander, along with him. Alexander helped lift and assemble some items, and he played ball with a son from one of the families served. It’s never too early to show your children the value of community service.
All ages are welcome to serve at PWRC’s service projects. Minors under 14 must bring a parent with them to volunteer.
This project falls in line with Rotary’s focus on providing clean water, sanitation and hygiene, as well as saving mothers and children. Both of the families we delivered to included multiple young children who had all been sleeping and eating on the floor. We were able to provide them with furniture so the family could live cleaner and more comfortably. We also provided the physical manpower to bring large items to them, to move these items into their houses, and to assemble the bed frames.
PWRC hopes to enrich the lives of our neighbors through Rotary’s motto, “Service Above Self.” Anyone can join us one day a month to roll up their sleeves and spend a few hours helping deliver much-needed items. No one will ever be asked to carry anything they feel uncomfortable lifting, and there are lighter items such as bedding and lamps for volunteers with limited mobility.
Future delivery dates include June 29 and July 9. Sign up here.
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