In the fall of 2007, members of the Kirkwood Baptist Church (KBC) pitched a non-profit organization. The idea for this charity came from a similar charity in Memphis, after a local Kirkwood pastor visited the city. KBC’s mission started with a simple question: “When people say Kirkwood Baptist Church, what comes to mind?” Their answer: The desire to help the most people in the Kirkwood community in just one day.
This movement evolved into a one-day charity event held the first Saturday of Oct., titled “Hands On Kirkwood.” KBC’s objective for the first HOK meeting was 150 participants, and more than 250 volunteers showed up ready to help instead.
Ever since, HOK has been helping Kirkwood every year by collecting donations for various non-profits and completing outdoor projects for those in the community who are unable to. Matthew Vandagriff, senior pastor at KBC and volunteer for HOK, helps plan the events.
“HOK [is] a community outreach project meant to allow both the church and members of the community to serve one another,” Vandagriff said. “It started more like [doing] home projects [and] yard work and it grew from there.”
Ever since the creation of HOK, their outreach into the community has expanded. The charity started with simple tasks such as donation drives, and has now grown to larger scale projects, including gutter cleaning, home services and electronic recycling. Gabriel Kaplan, junior and HOK volunteer, has participated in these projects for years through KBC.
“Kirkwood Baptist Church [completes] a magnitude of different projects,” Kaplan said. “[Volunteers] do yard work, house projects, lawn bag pickup [and] food pantry shifts. You can put bags on people’s doors, and come back and collect them once people have filled [with] food.”
Kaplan said the organization is special because of the people who show up to help every year. Volunteers take time to help their neighbors and try their best to achieve HOK’s goal of engaging in an “all-in-one-day mission blitz of Kirkwood,” as advertised on their website.
“For me, [volunteering] means bringing the community of Kirkwood together. [KBC has] all these different people who might not have a lot in common, but they have a [shared] goal to help Kirkwood,” Kaplan said. “I [love] to see people’s lives become a little easier when you help them.”
Not only does HOK help individuals through their volunteer work, they also collect items for more specialized charities in Kirkwood, such as KirkCare, a non-profit organization that provides food and emergency utility services to those in need within the KSD. Jennifer McCoy, former Keysor Elementary teacher, now works as a part-time employee for KirkCare, where she manages donations and clients for the non-profit.
“Our mission is to provide food and emergency utility assistance to people who live in the KSD,” McCoy said. “All the donations that were picked up [by HOK], the food donations and personal care items, were donated to KirkCare.”
As HOK is currently only a one-day event, volunteers can often only focus on the problems they can complete in a day’s work. However, Vandagriff said there might be room to grow in the future.
“HOK is a one-day event that takes weeks to plan, and I wish that HOK was something that happened more often,” Vandagriff said. “There are constant needs in our community and it would be great to see if [we] could meet those needs on other days. It would be hard for that to happen, but it might be something [we] could work (towards].”
