August 7, 2025 • 31 mins
David Campbell is the founder of All Hands and Hearts and the author of the book All Hands. All Hands and Heart is "an organization committed to effectively and efficiently addressing the immediate and long-term needs of global communities impacted by disasters." David and Lisa spoke about the impact the organization makes and how it changes the lives of volunteers as well as the citizens of the countries and states they help. Lisa gave David the opportunity to speak about the different disasters he's helped with and tell stories that stuck with him.
Visit www.allhandsandhearts.org for more information.
Visit www.allhandsandhearts.org for more information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, Welcome to Lisa's Book Club, a podcast where I
interview best selling authors from the New England area, pulling
back the curtain on what it's really like being a
best selling author. They're guilty pleasures, latest projects, and so
much more. We have a very special guest live in
studio with us, David Campbell. He's the author of All Hands.
(00:24):
It's the evolution of a volunteer powered disaster response organization
and funny story. I have a personal connection to David.
Welcome David, Thank you very much.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Lisa's great to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
So the personal connection is that over July fourth weekend,
I was down visiting my parents in Bluffton, South Carolina,
and in walks in to their house David Campbell, who
had just played golf with my sons Max and Riley,
and they met on the golf course and we're chatting
and found out that David was an author but was
(01:00):
also from Boston.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Well, actually living out in Carlisle, but ran a company
in Cambridge. So that's my basis of my.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Boston, Massachusetts base. Yeah, but it's like such a small world.
So we got to chatting in my parents' house about
you and about your work. And about starting all hands
and about the book, and I said, you know what,
the next time you're in Boston, why don't you come
into the studio and we'll do a podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
One of the things that's interesting about the disaster business,
everybody has an interest or some exposure to it, and
actually the volunteer component of it strikes the heart in
people saying I've always thought I could do something, but
I never quite knew how to do it. So but
I had a wonderful relationship with your sons. I wrote
with Max. This was the day where her son Riley
shot a sixty seven on a very difficult golf course
(01:48):
and Max only shot a seventy eight. I think I
shot one hundred and five. Anyway, got our conversation during
the day led to me wanting to really have him
understand more of the story.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Yeah, and he is an inquisitive guy and he's starting
at Brown in the fall, and I was so happy
that you guys made that connection. And he has read
the book as I have. And I was actually talking
to him last night because I told him you were
coming in and we both had the same first question,
how did you come up with this and why wasn't
(02:21):
this done?
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Before I can answer the first, I'm not sure I
can answer the second. So the first is my career
prior to All Hands was running different tech companies, a
couple of big ones computer task group that I grew
from twenty people to four thousand, and then I came
to Boston to be president of a great company here
called BBN Technologies after both Brantic and Newman were the founders.
(02:46):
But BBN is a Defense Department funded research organization that
in nineteen seventy actually won the Arpanet contract to create
the infrastructure of what is now the Internet, amazing wonderful
company now part of everython. But I came to be
president in ninety five to try to create more commercial
success for the company. It ended up being acquired and
(03:10):
is now part of Everytheon. But I became very familiar
with the Internet when the what's called Boxing Day tsunami
happened on December twenty sixth, two thousand and four. It
was the worst disaster in my lifetime at that time,
and I happened, by coincidence, to be having lunch two
days later with a friend and he mentioned he had
been in Thailand ten days before and at the hotel,
(03:35):
the Meridian Hotel where he was staying. You know, dozens
of people were killed in the tsunami, and it struck
me that, you know, everyone's curious about what the reality
is of a disaster, and the media presents one view,
but maybe it's not the real view. I was also
on the board at that time of a company called Tektronics,
and we had a board meeting in Berlin. So this
(03:57):
coincidence of events struck me. I called the manager of
the hotel in bang Tao, Thailand, and you know, the
hotel was empty because the guests had all left and
the people had been killed on an outdoor patio, but
the hotel was functioning, so I knew I had a base.
I was going halfway there anyway. I wanted to use
(04:18):
the internet to tell the truth, if you will, to
communicate to people. I'm here with my own eyes, this
is what I'm seeing, this is what's needed, and so
on and so forth. So that was the basis of going.
When I got there, we were able to use the
hotel's connections to get up on the Internet, and all
I intended to do was stay for ten days to
(04:39):
capture and share over the internet the stories. When we
did that, people started to come, you know, a dozen,
forty eighty. Eventually three hundred people came to the small
fishing village over the next three months. And after a
major disaster. The disaster, the tsunami was an incredible disaster.
(05:00):
There is an infinite amount of things to be done,
as simple as chainsawing logs that have fallen across the
road in a remote fishing village and just clearing up
rubble and frankly, the image of people interrupting their life
to come and help really inspires the local people who
feel somewhat hopeless that okay, someone knows, someone cares, and
(05:25):
that combination of volunteers actually being able to do something.
All you have to do is give them a safe
place to sleep, give them something to eat, and they
will work all day.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
So all hands will plug into there's a natural disaster,
and your organization will provide access if you want to
volunteer to wherever this disaster happened in a safe, reliable
environment where they're doing real work.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Yeah, and each one's different, and we've done close to
two hundred now over the twenty years since I mean,
I thought the Thailand was a one time thing. When
I came back only six months later Katrina hit, and
so that really was the next step in all right,
we learned a lot in Thailand, more than we ever anticipated.
(06:19):
But we know now what people need, how to organize,
what communities might need. So we incorporated as a nonprofit
on September sixth, the days after Katrina hit, and people
talk about fast growth companies. Thirty days later in Biloxi, Mississippi,
we had two hundred and sixteen volunteers living in a
(06:39):
church building we'd been given that you know, we had
to feed, equip with tools, have vehicles to transport. So
it was a heavy month for my credit card.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
So you talk about all of this in the book
and sort of the challenges that you had growing this
charity and developing a flexible and adaptable How hard was that?
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Well, Actually, one of the things that's great about a
volunteer power to organization. For going back, for example, to Bilexi,
I had one paid staff member who had been with
me in Thailand, Darius Monset, wonderful young man, and we
had gone together. He was the only staff member. But
when you have hundreds of volunteers, you have dozens of
people who would like to come on staff and organize
(07:26):
and stay and manage. So we added our second employee
in December again, a wonderful man named Mark Young, who
is sincere leone today on behalf of some charity mission.
But he was then my operations director for the next
ten years. And so the organizations has almost always promoted
from within from the group of volunteers who know everything
(07:50):
about the organization. They've been on multiple programs, they've lived
with us, and candidly we've lived with them. We don't
see them just during the workday. We see them twenty
four hours a day for maybe a month, and then
we decide that they could come on staff. So the
volunteer base, and there's been almost seventy thousand volunteers over
the twenty years. The volunteer base is the feedstock from
(08:14):
which we draw the operation staff.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
Which I found interesting in the book because you talk
about the American Red Cross, you talk about doctors without Borders,
habitat for humanity, and they would provide like the American
Red Cross would provide meals, but they didn't have the
type of infrastructure you had with the volunteer groups. And
that's how you kind of began growing it because you
(08:36):
would link up with them and provide services for them. Right.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Well, one thing that's interesting is that those two organizations,
for example, each have a specific thing they do. Right,
So the Red Cross delivers meals, habitable rebuild houses. But
one of the things you find after a disaster is
there's a plethora of needs, all kinds. I'll give you
one of the crazy examples and again this was still
in Biloxi, but one of dozens after Katrina, all the
(09:04):
street signs were destroyed. Okay, I mean when we go
in early on, we meet with the mayor, tell them
who we are, what we're we're going to be there,
and Darius came up with the idea, why don't we
build a system of street signs, Like, well, how would
you do that? While we ended up having like a
quilting bee from you know, the store. You get the
letters and you cut plastic and you paste them on
(09:25):
and you put them on telephone poles or you set
up a poll. We actually put in a new street
sign system because people are coming and saying, you know,
if you want to get there, go to where the
burger king used to be and take a rite. Well,
that's not really very helpful, right, So and then one
of the since everybody lost their vehicles, one of the
volunteers had the idea, which we encourage, and we bought
(09:48):
a hundred bicycles, put our logo on them, and distributed
the family so they had at least a way of
getting around the community. So these are unusual things, you know,
Red Cross or that's not their mission. Our mission is
to do what we in the community thinks is their
current need, and to do it effectively and quickly and
(10:10):
really connected to the community.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Did that connection though, and that the help you were
giving these larger organizations help sort of chart your path
and help your growth.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Frankly, we tend to listen to the community. We'll meet
with the mayor whatever and see. Oftentimes in this case,
there was a single council member who's poorer community was
really devastated, and so he really became our major contact point,
Bill Stalwarth. And for example, there was a community health
center in his community that have been devastated. Well, we
(10:44):
worked with that coastal community health center to help them
apply for emergency funding so they could get back in business.
They were really shattered and it's hard to get positive
energy when you've had such a negative thing happen to.
You come in with fresh people and fresh creativity and resources,
and we're willing to use it money or people. And
(11:08):
one thing that's fascinating when you get a group of people.
Now we had a large group, but even if you
say one hundred, you have someone with every special skill
you need. Yeah, somebody knows how to do somebod who
knows how to poor concrete whatever.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Well, you mentioned the photo retouching. Okay, that to me
struck me as such an interesting storyline because when you
think about it, everyone's when a disaster hits, their lives
are destroyed, and then you've got all of this debris.
And you said that that was a big part of
(11:41):
bringing the community back, was finding these photographs and retouching
them and then getting them to the families so they
had something.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Well. And this was in Japan after the March twenty
eleven tsunami. We had been working hard in Haiti after
the two thousand earthquake, and I was actually with a
Mark Jung in the Miami Airport having an all hands
board meeting when you know, the tsunami hit Japan, so
we changed our flights. Instead of going on to Haiti,
(12:09):
we flew immediately to Tokyo. We started up in the
areas that were hard hit, the fishing communities up on
the on the coast and Ofonada was where we were based.
And we had one volunteer, Becky Manson, whose professional job
as being a photo retoucher. She would say her job
is to take photo have photos of beautiful women and
make them more beautiful and retouching them. So but she
(12:31):
came to me one day, as people would know, many
the Japanese treasure photography treasure photographs and had all photographs
of their family that were basically mostly destroyed. And while
she was getting clean helping us clean out to bree
out of a house, she found a photo that she
could fix, and so she came to me and said,
would it be possible for five thousand dollars we could
buy a printer and whatever she needed and I could
(12:55):
scan these photos and retouch them and give them back
to people. That sounded like a good so we did it,
which is again one of the advantages of a small organization.
You take a good idea.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
And then just say yes and do it.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
And so she started doing it, but somehow it got
posted and people around the world photo retouchers reached out
to her, and I think we ended up having sixty
photo retouchers from around the world, where a damaged photo
would be scanned sent to them. They would spend hours
fixing it, send it back, we'd print it and invite
the family and and we had situations where literally a
(13:30):
couple said, we lost our daughter, but at least now
we have her photo and you know, wedding photos that
were so important. And Becky was actually invited to speak
at the at the main TED conference at south By
Southwest and to tell her story of how her unusual
skills were useful in this major disaster, which I don't
(13:50):
think people would have anticipated.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Not at all. I mean, you really just don't think
about that. But you're right, because you're a small organization,
you could sort of hit the ground running with these
smaller ideas. But the biggest impact in some people's lives
has there been over the past twenty years. What's been
the worst disaster that you guys have been connected to.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
I think Haiti the earthquake. We had gone into Haiti
in two thousand and seven, where there was into gona
Eve Haiti, which was a modest disaster but gave us experience.
In Haiti, there was torrential downpour that mountains came down
like three feet of mud in every house, So you know,
getting three feet of mud out of every house in
(14:30):
a city like Gonive was a major task. But then
the earthquake happened in January of twenty ten, and it
was a massive event in an extremely poor country. So
that combination is there's very few resources within the country,
and so we stayed for over two years in Haiti.
That I would say was the most difficult. And of course,
(14:50):
you know, Haiti has its challenges today with its poverty
and weak government and so the gangs have basically taken
over Haiti, so it's devastating to me. We you know,
we build twenty schools in Haiti. It was well if
you'd see the book. The cover of the book as
a young girl stepping up into her new school, which
to me is just a tangible representation of hope that
(15:11):
a person has a future, and that future, frankly was
given by our volunteers. We built that school that she's stepping.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Up up and the picture is of this beautiful little girl.
She's all dressed up in a yellow dress, ribbons in
her hair. And you're right, they have such respect for
education and the fact that you were able to rebuild
their school and they know that that's a central part
of their community. But I also want to mention that
your wife Gay took this picture.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Yeah, he's a great photographer, and she did take that picture.
And along with hundreds of others, she's been on dozens
of All Hinds projects with us all around the world,
from Haiti to Nepal to Bangladesh.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
And when you first started this, though, what did you
tell your wife because you were off you would say,
I'm leaving and I'm going to How did that work well?
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Her comment when I decided to stay in Thailand, she
does independently does photography trips, so I think she was
on a trip and so I said, okay, so I'm
going to stay these ten days. But when I called
and said I'm going to stay, and then I called
and said I'm going to stay again, she said, I
thought I married a corporate executive. Now I think I'm
married to a monk. So but she's a very good spirit,
(16:20):
and so she's gone with me on most of the
trips and actively supported everything we've done.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Yeah, and documented them too. Because you've worked with so
many volunteers over the past twenty years. What makes a
good volunteer.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
It's nice if they bring something special, But the main
thing is to bring the positive attitude that you're coming
there to help. And I remember one of the early
volunteers saying to me, you know, you help people, help people.
So if the volunteer can go outside of themselves and
just care about helping people and do what they need
(16:56):
and when you come I still remember were after Sandy,
for example, one of the jobs. Again there was horrific flooding,
and you think of a row of houses that have basements,
and our job would be to get everything out of
the house so we could then gut it down to
the studs and will treat it. And every now and
then someone come out of the house and go, oh, no,
(17:18):
we have another hoarder. You know, someone who saved every
copy of the New York Times in their basement that's
then been soaked in seawater that you have to carry
out is But the main thing is a willingness to help.
I think our oldest couple I know today is sort
of a seventy nine year old woman and a ninety
three year old man. We have a wonderful volunteer who
is in Bilexi, actually Mark Young's wife Dot, Mark Young's
(17:42):
mother Dot, who was eighty at the time, and she
would stay in and bake chocolate chip cookies. So when
two hundred volunteers came back at the end of the day,
there were dozens of plates of chocolate chip cookies. Well
that's what she could do, and that's what she did,
and it helped make the project successful.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Right, which is Yeah, it's so important that everyone feels
like they have a purpose, even if it's as simple
as baking cookies for the rest of the volunteers, which
is why I love all hands so much. You said
in the book that running a for profit company was
an all actuality much easier.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Well, you have simple motivations in a for profit company,
and people are paid a reasonable salary. We don't pay
didn't pay reasonable salaries.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Yeah, you're asking vainly, were.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Asking thousands of people to work for nothing, just for
a bed and a meal. But we're really letting this
desire they have to help people. And when I was
thinking on it in the early days, and people would
have that feeling and just be frustrated because they wouldn't
know what to do. But because of the Internet and
all of our applications come through the internet, we don't recruit.
(18:51):
But if someone goes to the Internet and says volunteer
Texas because they've seen the horrific flooding in Careville, Texas,
for example, the last month, we'll come up on that
search and it will be yes, we will take you,
and it won't cost you anything. Those are two sometimes
barriers to people actually going forward. And once someone's been
(19:13):
with us, they'll come back with more friends the next time,
and so the pool expands by that natural I did
something that they will say was the most important thing
I ever did in my life. Or people will come
back and say that was the best week of my life.
You know, a couple will come work for a week
and come back with this experience changed my life, which
(19:36):
I've heard literally hundreds and hundreds of times that to
me was always the most meaningful part of what we did.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
Well, you a lot of your volunteer shared stories in
the book How can people find you and how can
they volunteer what's the process.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
Well, the name of the organization, because we merged two
organizations together eight years ago, is now All Hands and Hearts.
A wonderful woman named Petro Damkova, who was in Thailand
when the tsunami hit started an organization later called Happy Hearts,
and we brought the two organizations together. A simple thing
to remember is the website. If you put in hands
(20:15):
dot org, you'll get to the All Hands and Hearts website.
Right there's information click about how to volunteer. Fill out
the information and it's a very simple process of you know,
we now do background checks on people just because we
have a broader footprint and set broader set of responsibilities.
But there's no charge. You have to get yourself to
(20:36):
the program, and whether it's in Nepal or Mexico or
Philippines or North Carolina or Texas, you basically can stay
as long as you'll fit into the program's guidelines. Now,
but you can stay a week is very productive. A
lot of people will stay a month and again people
can come back. You can go from one program to another,
so there's obviously no limit on the number of programs
(20:58):
you can do. But getting to putting in hands dot
Org into a browserroll gets you to the website and
it's pretty easy from there.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
Did you when the Pacific Palisades fire happened? Were you
guys on site?
Speaker 2 (21:11):
We went to the Pacific Palisades fire. Fires are very
difficult because basically they're so intense that almost everything is destroyed.
So I was in Maui, for example, earlier this year,
I think where after the similar to the Palisades fire,
everything was destroyed. But what's when you think of taking
a concentrated living area and everything is turned ash, there's
(21:36):
concern about what materials are in that ash, so it's
considered toxic waste. So first thing that has to happen
is the government, like the corp of Engineers, will come
and do gross cleaning of the disaster site once people
have had a chance to go through and see if
they can recover anything. But then before you can actually
build on the site, you need to have sort of
(21:56):
a finer level of cleaning, removing the party or tree
stumps or stones or things of that sort. So we
were doing food distribution in the early days, and then
we were doing sight cleaning in the later days, and
we built a number of what would be generally called
tiny homes, which were sort of structures that you a
family could put on their property to store things or
(22:18):
maybe stay in as they're getting ready to rebuild on
their property. So wildfires are tough. There's there're a different
challenge than flooding.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
For example, right, I was going to ask you that
what's the worst disaster earthquake, flooding, fire in your you know, well.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
The good and bad of fires, as they destroy everything,
so you sort of have a clean slate for us.
You know, the ones that take the most effort over
a long period of time are the flooding, you know,
Sandy and Hurricane Harvey and the hurricanes that hit in
the Caribbean. Those take thousands of hours of work, you know.
In Puerto Rico, the I think it was Maria was
(22:56):
the hurricane that people have one story homes with concrete roofs,
and the force of the storm put cracks in the roofs,
so we ended up having to repair over a thousand
roofs to make those homes really livable again. We'd come
into the homes and there would be seven places within
a forty by forty square foot home where water was
(23:18):
leaking through the roof. It's expensive the material you put first,
you had a scrape, then patch the cracks and then
reseal the surface. So it was expensive, but we're able
to raise money. One of the other things that happens
is there are people who wish they could donate, but
they want to be sure that their money is going
(23:39):
to be used effectively. And early on it occurred to
me one of our responsibilities is to be a bridge
of trust. You know that we can have. One end
of the bridge is the people with tremendous needs that
we know and can explain. And the other end of
the bridge is people who are willing to fund if
they believe their funds are going to go to a
family that absolutely needs it. Another observation I've had over
(24:02):
time is disasters are very inconvenient for the well to do.
Medium class are better, and they are devastating to the poor.
If you're poor and you've home has been flooded, you've
lost everything you own, You've lost your home, and you've
probably lost your job because you've probably worked nearby in
a small business that was also destroyed. So when we
go up, for example, when we went to Houston after Harvey,
(24:25):
I mean I went and met with the people at
Baker Ripley, which is the major social service organization, and said,
let's look at your census map of where out of
the poorest areas of the town, where is that the
ALI adjusted low income and we'll put our base in
the middle of it, because that way we'll understand the
needs better. Logistically, it's easier to get to the work,
(24:46):
and we really want our volunteers to identify with the community.
For many of our volunteers, it's the first time they've
seen real poverty, you know, the true poverty that people
both within the Uni United States and obviously when you
go to Haiti or Nepal or Bangladesh, you're seeing a
different level of poverty. But the volunteers get the appreciation
(25:08):
that people in these places are hard working and smart.
They have to be to survive, and so they really
create a significant empathy with the lives of those people,
and I think it changes their understanding and appreciation of
their own lives when they go home.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Yeah, you really talk about that in the book, that
the importance of being accepted into the community that you're
serving and that they trust you and they look at
you as like their biggest advocate and partner.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
And frankly it can be fun, which may seem strange,
but one of the things someone had an idea for
that we exercise in our in Nepal. We've been going
back to Nepal every year since twenty fifteen, building several
more schools. There were five thousand schools destroyed in the
twenty fifteen earthquake, and we try to bring our somewhat
(25:56):
I would say American values too. We try to deal
with gender equity among other things. So when we build
a school, will always add sufficient hygiene facilities so that
girls will stay in school, you know, as they get
into their early teenage years. In Nepal, we also started
a program where we train a group of women from
the community to be Masons, and so they help work,
(26:19):
they earn a skill, they get respect in their community.
But part of the deal is they have to come
to the base on Thursday night and teach volunteers Nepali dancing.
So it just is an example of the community enjoying
each other, you know, our volunteers in the community. When
we open a school in Mexico, the whole community turns out.
(26:39):
There's a parade all the kids are dressed in their finess.
The town will often put on a party for.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
All the volunteers their self proud.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Yeah. It's just a wonderful experience of desparate groups of
people having done something together and feeling joyous about it.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Do you have a favorite memory for the last twenty
years that stands out to you?
Speaker 2 (27:02):
There's been so many, you know, one of them? I
think we had one in Haiti. We employed dozens of
Haitians to teach them construction skills. We used our volunteers,
but when we're in a community like that, we'll also
employ locals to give them skills and give them some income.
And our project managed a wonderful architect, young man named
(27:23):
Tom Jardine, was completely fluent and Creole, and we had
a graduation ceremony for all of these Haitian volunteers to
give them certificates which would hopefully help them get a job.
But to see the warmth and the connection between between
Tom and all the volunteers and the respect, and that
(27:44):
was a very warm moment for me. There's been hundreds,
to be honest, but the one sort of pops in
my mind.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
It's really like what you've done in business and then
how you've turned it into something like that's just so impactful.
You're really an inspiration.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
Well, thank you. One thing I would mention it because
it's maybe not obvious, but I was sixty three years
old when I started all.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Hands see so and partly yeah, you know, I like this.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
I had worked for fort It was funny when I
was You just reminded me of another story when I
was in town and in the very earliest days there
were people there and people coming and going and so
on and so forth, and it was quite somewhat disorganized,
and I had an idea and people said, wow, it's
great that you have this corporate experience, so you can
understand it. Well, the idea was, why don't we get
a whiteboard? So my point is sometimes it's the simplest
(28:34):
thing just brings a little.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
Bit of an organization. I totally right, let's just start,
let's just start here, let's write down what we want
to do, and then let's start doing it. And yeah,
and the fact you're right, the fact that you started
this when you were sixty three is that I love
that because yeah, it's you can Yeah, well it was.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
It was just so much fun. I mean, it's one
thing to travel. There's a lot of different ways to travel.
You can stay in the hotels or you can stay closer,
but it's very different to travel with all hands. It's
the best way to learn a country, to learn the
people understand reality. It's I would say, there's no one
that's had an experience as far as I know with
All Hands didn't say that was one of the best
(29:15):
things I ever did in my life.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
How much time do people have to spend with all hands? Like,
can they volunteer for a few days, they can.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Come for a weekend. I mean, frankly, when we have
like the projects in Texas or North Carolina, it's great
to have local people who weren't affected by the disaster
come and work on the weekend. We can organize that
and use that. If you're going to go on an
international project, a week is the minimum that makes any
sense at all. My two granddaughters just came back from
the All Hands Project New Mexico, and you know, they
(29:45):
enjoyed having their time together, but they had an experience
of helping build a school. On the international projects, a
month really is the time it takes to get to
understand the country. Better because you know some of the
language and customs and you've had a lit time to travel
in the country.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
Also, can how old do you have to be?
Speaker 2 (30:05):
Eighteen or sixteen with an adult?
Speaker 1 (30:07):
Okay, good to know because I wanted to bring the boys.
I think this would be a fun not well, I
think it would be something that they would love to do.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
It would be fun family and it really is mind
expanding in terms of the world and people in the world.
And you know, the other thing is you can sit
down at night for dinner and if you've been working
mixing concrete and you're sitting at a table, it might
be you know a couple from Germany and two kids
from Brazil on a gap year, and you know a
(30:37):
doctor from Chicago, and yet you all work in the
same way during the day. So all the conversation is
respectful and unlimited for those conversations at night. And the
connections that have been found across volunteers of very disparate
backgrounds is very powerful.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
It sounds like it and I am definitely going to
be doing this again. How can people find you if
they want to volunteer.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
Well, the web full name of the website would be
all Handsandhearts dot org. But if you go to hands
dot org you'll get there.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
Well, I think we're going to have a lot of
people volunteering to keep your mission going. This is so
much fun, David. I could literally sit here for hours
hearing about all of your projects and stories, and you're
such an incredible person and I again I'm just in
awe of everything that you've been able to accomplish.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
Well, thank you, Lisa, thanks for the opportunity, and it
just delightful to meet your sons and delightful to meet you.
So thank Thanks to everybody who's listening. Okay, encourage you
to take the chance, reach out and just do it.
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
Thanks,
Hey, Welcome to Lisa's Book Club, a podcast where I
interview best selling authors from the New England area, pulling
back the curtain on what it's really like being a
best selling author. They're guilty pleasures, latest projects, and so
much more. We have a very special guest live in
studio with us, David Campbell. He's the author of All Hands.
(00:24):
It's the evolution of a volunteer powered disaster response organization
and funny story. I have a personal connection to David.
Welcome David, Thank you very much.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Lisa's great to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
So the personal connection is that over July fourth weekend,
I was down visiting my parents in Bluffton, South Carolina,
and in walks in to their house David Campbell, who
had just played golf with my sons Max and Riley,
and they met on the golf course and we're chatting
and found out that David was an author but was
(01:00):
also from Boston.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Well, actually living out in Carlisle, but ran a company
in Cambridge. So that's my basis of my.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Boston, Massachusetts base. Yeah, but it's like such a small world.
So we got to chatting in my parents' house about
you and about your work. And about starting all hands
and about the book, and I said, you know what,
the next time you're in Boston, why don't you come
into the studio and we'll do a podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
One of the things that's interesting about the disaster business,
everybody has an interest or some exposure to it, and
actually the volunteer component of it strikes the heart in
people saying I've always thought I could do something, but
I never quite knew how to do it. So but
I had a wonderful relationship with your sons. I wrote
with Max. This was the day where her son Riley
shot a sixty seven on a very difficult golf course
(01:48):
and Max only shot a seventy eight. I think I
shot one hundred and five. Anyway, got our conversation during
the day led to me wanting to really have him
understand more of the story.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Yeah, and he is an inquisitive guy and he's starting
at Brown in the fall, and I was so happy
that you guys made that connection. And he has read
the book as I have. And I was actually talking
to him last night because I told him you were
coming in and we both had the same first question,
how did you come up with this and why wasn't
(02:21):
this done?
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Before I can answer the first, I'm not sure I
can answer the second. So the first is my career
prior to All Hands was running different tech companies, a
couple of big ones computer task group that I grew
from twenty people to four thousand, and then I came
to Boston to be president of a great company here
called BBN Technologies after both Brantic and Newman were the founders.
(02:46):
But BBN is a Defense Department funded research organization that
in nineteen seventy actually won the Arpanet contract to create
the infrastructure of what is now the Internet, amazing wonderful
company now part of everython. But I came to be
president in ninety five to try to create more commercial
success for the company. It ended up being acquired and
(03:10):
is now part of Everytheon. But I became very familiar
with the Internet when the what's called Boxing Day tsunami
happened on December twenty sixth, two thousand and four. It
was the worst disaster in my lifetime at that time,
and I happened, by coincidence, to be having lunch two
days later with a friend and he mentioned he had
been in Thailand ten days before and at the hotel,
(03:35):
the Meridian Hotel where he was staying. You know, dozens
of people were killed in the tsunami, and it struck
me that, you know, everyone's curious about what the reality
is of a disaster, and the media presents one view,
but maybe it's not the real view. I was also
on the board at that time of a company called Tektronics,
and we had a board meeting in Berlin. So this
(03:57):
coincidence of events struck me. I called the manager of
the hotel in bang Tao, Thailand, and you know, the
hotel was empty because the guests had all left and
the people had been killed on an outdoor patio, but
the hotel was functioning, so I knew I had a base.
I was going halfway there anyway. I wanted to use
(04:18):
the internet to tell the truth, if you will, to
communicate to people. I'm here with my own eyes, this
is what I'm seeing, this is what's needed, and so
on and so forth. So that was the basis of going.
When I got there, we were able to use the
hotel's connections to get up on the Internet, and all
I intended to do was stay for ten days to
(04:39):
capture and share over the internet the stories. When we
did that, people started to come, you know, a dozen,
forty eighty. Eventually three hundred people came to the small
fishing village over the next three months. And after a
major disaster. The disaster, the tsunami was an incredible disaster.
(05:00):
There is an infinite amount of things to be done,
as simple as chainsawing logs that have fallen across the
road in a remote fishing village and just clearing up
rubble and frankly, the image of people interrupting their life
to come and help really inspires the local people who
feel somewhat hopeless that okay, someone knows, someone cares, and
(05:25):
that combination of volunteers actually being able to do something.
All you have to do is give them a safe
place to sleep, give them something to eat, and they
will work all day.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
So all hands will plug into there's a natural disaster,
and your organization will provide access if you want to
volunteer to wherever this disaster happened in a safe, reliable
environment where they're doing real work.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Yeah, and each one's different, and we've done close to
two hundred now over the twenty years since I mean,
I thought the Thailand was a one time thing. When
I came back only six months later Katrina hit, and
so that really was the next step in all right,
we learned a lot in Thailand, more than we ever anticipated.
(06:19):
But we know now what people need, how to organize,
what communities might need. So we incorporated as a nonprofit
on September sixth, the days after Katrina hit, and people
talk about fast growth companies. Thirty days later in Biloxi, Mississippi,
we had two hundred and sixteen volunteers living in a
(06:39):
church building we'd been given that you know, we had
to feed, equip with tools, have vehicles to transport. So
it was a heavy month for my credit card.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
So you talk about all of this in the book
and sort of the challenges that you had growing this
charity and developing a flexible and adaptable How hard was that?
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Well, Actually, one of the things that's great about a
volunteer power to organization. For going back, for example, to Bilexi,
I had one paid staff member who had been with
me in Thailand, Darius Monset, wonderful young man, and we
had gone together. He was the only staff member. But
when you have hundreds of volunteers, you have dozens of
people who would like to come on staff and organize
(07:26):
and stay and manage. So we added our second employee
in December again, a wonderful man named Mark Young, who
is sincere leone today on behalf of some charity mission.
But he was then my operations director for the next
ten years. And so the organizations has almost always promoted
from within from the group of volunteers who know everything
(07:50):
about the organization. They've been on multiple programs, they've lived
with us, and candidly we've lived with them. We don't
see them just during the workday. We see them twenty
four hours a day for maybe a month, and then
we decide that they could come on staff. So the
volunteer base, and there's been almost seventy thousand volunteers over
the twenty years. The volunteer base is the feedstock from
(08:14):
which we draw the operation staff.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
Which I found interesting in the book because you talk
about the American Red Cross, you talk about doctors without Borders,
habitat for humanity, and they would provide like the American
Red Cross would provide meals, but they didn't have the
type of infrastructure you had with the volunteer groups. And
that's how you kind of began growing it because you
(08:36):
would link up with them and provide services for them. Right.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Well, one thing that's interesting is that those two organizations,
for example, each have a specific thing they do. Right,
So the Red Cross delivers meals, habitable rebuild houses. But
one of the things you find after a disaster is
there's a plethora of needs, all kinds. I'll give you
one of the crazy examples and again this was still
in Biloxi, but one of dozens after Katrina, all the
(09:04):
street signs were destroyed. Okay, I mean when we go
in early on, we meet with the mayor, tell them
who we are, what we're we're going to be there,
and Darius came up with the idea, why don't we
build a system of street signs, Like, well, how would
you do that? While we ended up having like a
quilting bee from you know, the store. You get the
letters and you cut plastic and you paste them on
(09:25):
and you put them on telephone poles or you set
up a poll. We actually put in a new street
sign system because people are coming and saying, you know,
if you want to get there, go to where the
burger king used to be and take a rite. Well,
that's not really very helpful, right, So and then one
of the since everybody lost their vehicles, one of the
volunteers had the idea, which we encourage, and we bought
(09:48):
a hundred bicycles, put our logo on them, and distributed
the family so they had at least a way of
getting around the community. So these are unusual things, you know,
Red Cross or that's not their mission. Our mission is
to do what we in the community thinks is their
current need, and to do it effectively and quickly and
(10:10):
really connected to the community.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Did that connection though, and that the help you were
giving these larger organizations help sort of chart your path
and help your growth.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Frankly, we tend to listen to the community. We'll meet
with the mayor whatever and see. Oftentimes in this case,
there was a single council member who's poorer community was
really devastated, and so he really became our major contact point,
Bill Stalwarth. And for example, there was a community health
center in his community that have been devastated. Well, we
(10:44):
worked with that coastal community health center to help them
apply for emergency funding so they could get back in business.
They were really shattered and it's hard to get positive
energy when you've had such a negative thing happen to.
You come in with fresh people and fresh creativity and resources,
and we're willing to use it money or people. And
(11:08):
one thing that's fascinating when you get a group of people.
Now we had a large group, but even if you
say one hundred, you have someone with every special skill
you need. Yeah, somebody knows how to do somebod who
knows how to poor concrete whatever.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Well, you mentioned the photo retouching. Okay, that to me
struck me as such an interesting storyline because when you
think about it, everyone's when a disaster hits, their lives
are destroyed, and then you've got all of this debris.
And you said that that was a big part of
(11:41):
bringing the community back, was finding these photographs and retouching
them and then getting them to the families so they
had something.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Well. And this was in Japan after the March twenty
eleven tsunami. We had been working hard in Haiti after
the two thousand earthquake, and I was actually with a
Mark Jung in the Miami Airport having an all hands
board meeting when you know, the tsunami hit Japan, so
we changed our flights. Instead of going on to Haiti,
(12:09):
we flew immediately to Tokyo. We started up in the
areas that were hard hit, the fishing communities up on
the on the coast and Ofonada was where we were based.
And we had one volunteer, Becky Manson, whose professional job
as being a photo retoucher. She would say her job
is to take photo have photos of beautiful women and
make them more beautiful and retouching them. So but she
(12:31):
came to me one day, as people would know, many
the Japanese treasure photography treasure photographs and had all photographs
of their family that were basically mostly destroyed. And while
she was getting clean helping us clean out to bree
out of a house, she found a photo that she
could fix, and so she came to me and said,
would it be possible for five thousand dollars we could
buy a printer and whatever she needed and I could
(12:55):
scan these photos and retouch them and give them back
to people. That sounded like a good so we did it,
which is again one of the advantages of a small organization.
You take a good idea.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
And then just say yes and do it.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
And so she started doing it, but somehow it got
posted and people around the world photo retouchers reached out
to her, and I think we ended up having sixty
photo retouchers from around the world, where a damaged photo
would be scanned sent to them. They would spend hours
fixing it, send it back, we'd print it and invite
the family and and we had situations where literally a
(13:30):
couple said, we lost our daughter, but at least now
we have her photo and you know, wedding photos that
were so important. And Becky was actually invited to speak
at the at the main TED conference at south By
Southwest and to tell her story of how her unusual
skills were useful in this major disaster, which I don't
(13:50):
think people would have anticipated.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Not at all. I mean, you really just don't think
about that. But you're right, because you're a small organization,
you could sort of hit the ground running with these
smaller ideas. But the biggest impact in some people's lives
has there been over the past twenty years. What's been
the worst disaster that you guys have been connected to.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
I think Haiti the earthquake. We had gone into Haiti
in two thousand and seven, where there was into gona
Eve Haiti, which was a modest disaster but gave us experience.
In Haiti, there was torrential downpour that mountains came down
like three feet of mud in every house, So you know,
getting three feet of mud out of every house in
(14:30):
a city like Gonive was a major task. But then
the earthquake happened in January of twenty ten, and it
was a massive event in an extremely poor country. So
that combination is there's very few resources within the country,
and so we stayed for over two years in Haiti.
That I would say was the most difficult. And of course,
(14:50):
you know, Haiti has its challenges today with its poverty
and weak government and so the gangs have basically taken
over Haiti, so it's devastating to me. We you know,
we build twenty schools in Haiti. It was well if
you'd see the book. The cover of the book as
a young girl stepping up into her new school, which
to me is just a tangible representation of hope that
(15:11):
a person has a future, and that future, frankly was
given by our volunteers. We built that school that she's stepping.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Up up and the picture is of this beautiful little girl.
She's all dressed up in a yellow dress, ribbons in
her hair. And you're right, they have such respect for
education and the fact that you were able to rebuild
their school and they know that that's a central part
of their community. But I also want to mention that
your wife Gay took this picture.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Yeah, he's a great photographer, and she did take that picture.
And along with hundreds of others, she's been on dozens
of All Hinds projects with us all around the world,
from Haiti to Nepal to Bangladesh.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
And when you first started this, though, what did you
tell your wife because you were off you would say,
I'm leaving and I'm going to How did that work well?
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Her comment when I decided to stay in Thailand, she
does independently does photography trips, so I think she was
on a trip and so I said, okay, so I'm
going to stay these ten days. But when I called
and said I'm going to stay, and then I called
and said I'm going to stay again, she said, I
thought I married a corporate executive. Now I think I'm
married to a monk. So but she's a very good spirit,
(16:20):
and so she's gone with me on most of the
trips and actively supported everything we've done.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Yeah, and documented them too. Because you've worked with so
many volunteers over the past twenty years. What makes a
good volunteer.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
It's nice if they bring something special, But the main
thing is to bring the positive attitude that you're coming
there to help. And I remember one of the early
volunteers saying to me, you know, you help people, help people.
So if the volunteer can go outside of themselves and
just care about helping people and do what they need
(16:56):
and when you come I still remember were after Sandy,
for example, one of the jobs. Again there was horrific flooding,
and you think of a row of houses that have basements,
and our job would be to get everything out of
the house so we could then gut it down to
the studs and will treat it. And every now and
then someone come out of the house and go, oh, no,
(17:18):
we have another hoarder. You know, someone who saved every
copy of the New York Times in their basement that's
then been soaked in seawater that you have to carry
out is But the main thing is a willingness to help.
I think our oldest couple I know today is sort
of a seventy nine year old woman and a ninety
three year old man. We have a wonderful volunteer who
is in Bilexi, actually Mark Young's wife Dot, Mark Young's
(17:42):
mother Dot, who was eighty at the time, and she
would stay in and bake chocolate chip cookies. So when
two hundred volunteers came back at the end of the day,
there were dozens of plates of chocolate chip cookies. Well
that's what she could do, and that's what she did,
and it helped make the project successful.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Right, which is Yeah, it's so important that everyone feels
like they have a purpose, even if it's as simple
as baking cookies for the rest of the volunteers, which
is why I love all hands so much. You said
in the book that running a for profit company was
an all actuality much easier.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Well, you have simple motivations in a for profit company,
and people are paid a reasonable salary. We don't pay
didn't pay reasonable salaries.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Yeah, you're asking vainly, were.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Asking thousands of people to work for nothing, just for
a bed and a meal. But we're really letting this
desire they have to help people. And when I was
thinking on it in the early days, and people would
have that feeling and just be frustrated because they wouldn't
know what to do. But because of the Internet and
all of our applications come through the internet, we don't recruit.
(18:51):
But if someone goes to the Internet and says volunteer
Texas because they've seen the horrific flooding in Careville, Texas,
for example, the last month, we'll come up on that
search and it will be yes, we will take you,
and it won't cost you anything. Those are two sometimes
barriers to people actually going forward. And once someone's been
(19:13):
with us, they'll come back with more friends the next time,
and so the pool expands by that natural I did
something that they will say was the most important thing
I ever did in my life. Or people will come
back and say that was the best week of my life.
You know, a couple will come work for a week
and come back with this experience changed my life, which
(19:36):
I've heard literally hundreds and hundreds of times that to
me was always the most meaningful part of what we did.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
Well, you a lot of your volunteer shared stories in
the book How can people find you and how can
they volunteer what's the process.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
Well, the name of the organization, because we merged two
organizations together eight years ago, is now All Hands and Hearts.
A wonderful woman named Petro Damkova, who was in Thailand
when the tsunami hit started an organization later called Happy Hearts,
and we brought the two organizations together. A simple thing
to remember is the website. If you put in hands
(20:15):
dot org, you'll get to the All Hands and Hearts website.
Right there's information click about how to volunteer. Fill out
the information and it's a very simple process of you know,
we now do background checks on people just because we
have a broader footprint and set broader set of responsibilities.
But there's no charge. You have to get yourself to
(20:36):
the program, and whether it's in Nepal or Mexico or
Philippines or North Carolina or Texas, you basically can stay
as long as you'll fit into the program's guidelines. Now,
but you can stay a week is very productive. A
lot of people will stay a month and again people
can come back. You can go from one program to another,
so there's obviously no limit on the number of programs
(20:58):
you can do. But getting to putting in hands dot
Org into a browserroll gets you to the website and
it's pretty easy from there.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
Did you when the Pacific Palisades fire happened? Were you
guys on site?
Speaker 2 (21:11):
We went to the Pacific Palisades fire. Fires are very
difficult because basically they're so intense that almost everything is destroyed.
So I was in Maui, for example, earlier this year,
I think where after the similar to the Palisades fire,
everything was destroyed. But what's when you think of taking
a concentrated living area and everything is turned ash, there's
(21:36):
concern about what materials are in that ash, so it's
considered toxic waste. So first thing that has to happen
is the government, like the corp of Engineers, will come
and do gross cleaning of the disaster site once people
have had a chance to go through and see if
they can recover anything. But then before you can actually
build on the site, you need to have sort of
(21:56):
a finer level of cleaning, removing the party or tree
stumps or stones or things of that sort. So we
were doing food distribution in the early days, and then
we were doing sight cleaning in the later days, and
we built a number of what would be generally called
tiny homes, which were sort of structures that you a
family could put on their property to store things or
(22:18):
maybe stay in as they're getting ready to rebuild on
their property. So wildfires are tough. There's there're a different
challenge than flooding.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
For example, right, I was going to ask you that
what's the worst disaster earthquake, flooding, fire in your you know, well.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
The good and bad of fires, as they destroy everything,
so you sort of have a clean slate for us.
You know, the ones that take the most effort over
a long period of time are the flooding, you know,
Sandy and Hurricane Harvey and the hurricanes that hit in
the Caribbean. Those take thousands of hours of work, you know.
In Puerto Rico, the I think it was Maria was
(22:56):
the hurricane that people have one story homes with concrete roofs,
and the force of the storm put cracks in the roofs,
so we ended up having to repair over a thousand
roofs to make those homes really livable again. We'd come
into the homes and there would be seven places within
a forty by forty square foot home where water was
(23:18):
leaking through the roof. It's expensive the material you put first,
you had a scrape, then patch the cracks and then
reseal the surface. So it was expensive, but we're able
to raise money. One of the other things that happens
is there are people who wish they could donate, but
they want to be sure that their money is going
(23:39):
to be used effectively. And early on it occurred to
me one of our responsibilities is to be a bridge
of trust. You know that we can have. One end
of the bridge is the people with tremendous needs that
we know and can explain. And the other end of
the bridge is people who are willing to fund if
they believe their funds are going to go to a
family that absolutely needs it. Another observation I've had over
(24:02):
time is disasters are very inconvenient for the well to do.
Medium class are better, and they are devastating to the poor.
If you're poor and you've home has been flooded, you've
lost everything you own, You've lost your home, and you've
probably lost your job because you've probably worked nearby in
a small business that was also destroyed. So when we
go up, for example, when we went to Houston after Harvey,
(24:25):
I mean I went and met with the people at
Baker Ripley, which is the major social service organization, and said,
let's look at your census map of where out of
the poorest areas of the town, where is that the
ALI adjusted low income and we'll put our base in
the middle of it, because that way we'll understand the
needs better. Logistically, it's easier to get to the work,
(24:46):
and we really want our volunteers to identify with the community.
For many of our volunteers, it's the first time they've
seen real poverty, you know, the true poverty that people
both within the Uni United States and obviously when you
go to Haiti or Nepal or Bangladesh, you're seeing a
different level of poverty. But the volunteers get the appreciation
(25:08):
that people in these places are hard working and smart.
They have to be to survive, and so they really
create a significant empathy with the lives of those people,
and I think it changes their understanding and appreciation of
their own lives when they go home.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Yeah, you really talk about that in the book, that
the importance of being accepted into the community that you're
serving and that they trust you and they look at
you as like their biggest advocate and partner.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
And frankly it can be fun, which may seem strange,
but one of the things someone had an idea for
that we exercise in our in Nepal. We've been going
back to Nepal every year since twenty fifteen, building several
more schools. There were five thousand schools destroyed in the
twenty fifteen earthquake, and we try to bring our somewhat
(25:56):
I would say American values too. We try to deal
with gender equity among other things. So when we build
a school, will always add sufficient hygiene facilities so that
girls will stay in school, you know, as they get
into their early teenage years. In Nepal, we also started
a program where we train a group of women from
the community to be Masons, and so they help work,
(26:19):
they earn a skill, they get respect in their community.
But part of the deal is they have to come
to the base on Thursday night and teach volunteers Nepali dancing.
So it just is an example of the community enjoying
each other, you know, our volunteers in the community. When
we open a school in Mexico, the whole community turns out.
(26:39):
There's a parade all the kids are dressed in their finess.
The town will often put on a party for.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
All the volunteers their self proud.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Yeah. It's just a wonderful experience of desparate groups of
people having done something together and feeling joyous about it.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Do you have a favorite memory for the last twenty
years that stands out to you?
Speaker 2 (27:02):
There's been so many, you know, one of them? I
think we had one in Haiti. We employed dozens of
Haitians to teach them construction skills. We used our volunteers,
but when we're in a community like that, we'll also
employ locals to give them skills and give them some income.
And our project managed a wonderful architect, young man named
(27:23):
Tom Jardine, was completely fluent and Creole, and we had
a graduation ceremony for all of these Haitian volunteers to
give them certificates which would hopefully help them get a job.
But to see the warmth and the connection between between
Tom and all the volunteers and the respect, and that
(27:44):
was a very warm moment for me. There's been hundreds,
to be honest, but the one sort of pops in
my mind.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
It's really like what you've done in business and then
how you've turned it into something like that's just so impactful.
You're really an inspiration.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
Well, thank you. One thing I would mention it because
it's maybe not obvious, but I was sixty three years
old when I started all.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Hands see so and partly yeah, you know, I like this.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
I had worked for fort It was funny when I
was You just reminded me of another story when I
was in town and in the very earliest days there
were people there and people coming and going and so
on and so forth, and it was quite somewhat disorganized,
and I had an idea and people said, wow, it's
great that you have this corporate experience, so you can
understand it. Well, the idea was, why don't we get
a whiteboard? So my point is sometimes it's the simplest
(28:34):
thing just brings a little.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
Bit of an organization. I totally right, let's just start,
let's just start here, let's write down what we want
to do, and then let's start doing it. And yeah,
and the fact you're right, the fact that you started
this when you were sixty three is that I love
that because yeah, it's you can Yeah, well it was.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
It was just so much fun. I mean, it's one
thing to travel. There's a lot of different ways to travel.
You can stay in the hotels or you can stay closer,
but it's very different to travel with all hands. It's
the best way to learn a country, to learn the
people understand reality. It's I would say, there's no one
that's had an experience as far as I know with
All Hands didn't say that was one of the best
(29:15):
things I ever did in my life.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
How much time do people have to spend with all hands? Like,
can they volunteer for a few days, they can.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Come for a weekend. I mean, frankly, when we have
like the projects in Texas or North Carolina, it's great
to have local people who weren't affected by the disaster
come and work on the weekend. We can organize that
and use that. If you're going to go on an
international project, a week is the minimum that makes any
sense at all. My two granddaughters just came back from
the All Hands Project New Mexico, and you know, they
(29:45):
enjoyed having their time together, but they had an experience
of helping build a school. On the international projects, a
month really is the time it takes to get to
understand the country. Better because you know some of the
language and customs and you've had a lit time to travel
in the country.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
Also, can how old do you have to be?
Speaker 2 (30:05):
Eighteen or sixteen with an adult?
Speaker 1 (30:07):
Okay, good to know because I wanted to bring the boys.
I think this would be a fun not well, I
think it would be something that they would love to do.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
It would be fun family and it really is mind
expanding in terms of the world and people in the world.
And you know, the other thing is you can sit
down at night for dinner and if you've been working
mixing concrete and you're sitting at a table, it might
be you know a couple from Germany and two kids
from Brazil on a gap year, and you know a
(30:37):
doctor from Chicago, and yet you all work in the
same way during the day. So all the conversation is
respectful and unlimited for those conversations at night. And the
connections that have been found across volunteers of very disparate
backgrounds is very powerful.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
It sounds like it and I am definitely going to
be doing this again. How can people find you if
they want to volunteer.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
Well, the web full name of the website would be
all Handsandhearts dot org. But if you go to hands
dot org you'll get there.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
Well, I think we're going to have a lot of
people volunteering to keep your mission going. This is so
much fun, David. I could literally sit here for hours
hearing about all of your projects and stories, and you're
such an incredible person and I again I'm just in
awe of everything that you've been able to accomplish.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
Well, thank you, Lisa, thanks for the opportunity, and it
just delightful to meet your sons and delightful to meet you.
So thank Thanks to everybody who's listening. Okay, encourage you
to take the chance, reach out and just do it.
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
Thanks,
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