Extreme Community Makeover
Practice
Decide to volunteer as group or join a team of individual volunteers.
Select a neighborhood and date to volunteer.
Sign up through the ECM Volunteer Hub website.
Show up and help a neighbor with home improvement.
“ Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, what are you doing for others?”
Angela Bomgaars founded Extreme Community Makeover in 2008 as a way to build relationships between neighbors and across neighborhoods. She first coordinated teams to serve older residents, living in older homes, in the West Colfax and Villa Park neighborhoods.
Volunteering a day to help with home improvement on an older home is a practice that connects you to diverse neighbors and neighborhoods in Denver. Extreme Community Makeover (ECM) partners volunteers with Denver residents to improve their homes and neighborhoods. “Neighborhood beautification is encouraging and inspiring,” Bomgaars says with sincere passion. “It provides community for people who are often living on their own while alleviating the burden of caring for their home alone.” The work of ECM helps create safer environments, cultivates community among residents and resource providers, and provides residents crucial home improvement.
The ECM model is “adopt-a-block.” Volunteers knock on doors ahead of work days to connect with neighbors. They ask about any external home improvement projects that could be done by volunteers. Many of the neighbors have a physical or financial need that creates a barrier for them to accomplish the projects on their own. ECM connects volunteer teams with home owners in need of helping hands. Together they make important home improvements that make a tangible difference.
“There is power in people physically working together,” says Angela Bomgaars. Volunteering a day to help neighbors in need provides friends, co-workers, or people from a local congregation a new way to connect. ECM can coordinate teams of 5, 50, or 500. They coordinate volunteers from April through October in eight Denver neighborhoods: Barnum, Elyria, Swansea, Globeville, La Alma, Westwood, Villa Park, and West Colfax. Bomgaars believes in the value of getting outside and working alongside neighbors, “At the end of a long day of work, people are always smiling because of the work they have done together.”
A single day or project may look insignificant, but the cumulative impact is incredible. Since 2008, ECM has coordinated over 40,000 volunteers for over 3,000 homes. ECM is responsible for over 5 million dollars of volunteer hours being invested into Denver neighborhoods. The practice of volunteering to help neighbors with home improvement makes a significant difference in the lives of neighbors and neighborhoods.
More information and sign up to volunteer at extremecommunitymakeover.org.
