Kim Needs a New Truck! Desperately

(This is a little long, but please read it. I think you will get the idea as to why you should donate.)

Okay. So Builders Without Borders of Texas needs a new truck... but Kim does most of the driving... so...

Builders Without Borders of Texas (BWBT) was founded in 2004 by Kim Reed. To this day, he has dedicated his life to the organization and the people that it serves. I will share with you a little bit about the organization later. First, let me share with you a little bit about Kim. His entire adult life has been dedicated to helping others, especially those less fortunate. He is all about lifting others up and providing opportunity for success. His service has included almost a full-time life of volunteer hours and often significant amounts of his personal income.

He has been named Brazoria County Citizen of the Year, an Honorary Paul Harris Fellow by the Rotary Club, recognized by Friendswood High School's Athletic Department for countless hours of dedication and resources, by Hood-Case Elementary School for countless hours and resources in building an Outdoor Science Center in the 1980s, which is still used by the school today (in fact, just a few months ago, he was back there doing repairs and maintenance on this project), and recognized for going above and beyond in serving ARC. He was given the Community Builder Award by the Masonic Grand Lodge (an extremely rare award). He was the recipient of the Channel 13 News Volunteer Award, The Facts 2004 Unsung Hero, and earned a Distinguished Alumni Award from Friendswood High School. In addition, he spent many hours conducting a yearly program at Houston's low-income high schools in which he leased a bus and took kids who had never left Houston to Austin to tour the capital and college campuses to broaden their horizons and open their eyes to the possibilities of what could be. He spent many years purchasing gifts and dressing as Santa and quietly delivering toys to the children's ward at UTMB Hospital in Galveston. He spent ten years as the Construction Manager for the Alvin/Friendswood/Pearland Chapter of Habitat for Humanity and never took a salary. Most HFH Chapters pay their construction managers. He was responsible for the infrastructure and construction of Huser Village, a HFH community that serves families in Alvin. These are just the things I know about. I am willing to bet there are more.

Now about BWBT... You can look at the web site to get the idea of what the organization does. From Mexico, to Haiti, to local Texas help and disaster relief around the country, all of the work requires a heavy duty truck that can pull heavy equipment, trailers and go lots of miles. When BWBT first started, Kim used his personal Ford truck until it had 350,000 miles on it. It still ran, and so he gave it to his friend Cornelio, a fisherman in a poverty stricken village in Mexico, to use as a work truck. Cornelio still has the truck :) In 2008, BWBT was able to purchase a Dodge truck. Over the past two years, Kim has spent in the thousands of dollars keeping it running. It now has over 350,000 miles on it. This past week, the truck broke down in the midst of Kim working morning until night every day leading teams doing emergency clean-up at homes around our community that were flooded by Hurricane Harvey. He is about to put at least another $1,500 into the truck to keep it going. When the truck broke down in the middle of helping Hurricane Harvey victims, did Kim stop helping? No. He got his dad's 1980s pick-up truck with over 250,000 miles on it that his dad doesn't drive much any more, and used that to keep going.

Not to get too personal, but here goes. How has Kim been able to put all of this time into helping others? He is a builder. In the 1980s, he made the wise decision to build commercial lease property. That somewhat passive income (other than maintaing the property and working with commercial tenants) gave him an income to live on without being tied to an office everyday and give him time to dedicate to helping others. BWBT has a resale store, from which all of the profits go to its projects. The BWBT resale store was located in Kim's commercial building. The entire building was flooded with four feet of water during Hurricane Harvey. So now in addition to not having personal income coming in from the building while he gets it rebuilt, BWBT has also lost a significant source of funding while the resale store space is out of commission. The building has been cleaned and dried out. Once it was dry, BWBT immediately opened the resale store space as a Harvey Relief Center and has been taking in emergency donations and giving them out to the flood victims.  All of this work is and will be done from a 1980s pick-up truck with over 250,000 miles on it!

I am here to ask friends, family and anyone else who wants to help, to donate to purchase a truck for BWBT. BWBT is setting up a base camp at its facility in Alvin, where teams will house over the long-term recovery and rebuild process from Hurricane Harvey. We really need a truck to continue on. The needs are now greater than ever to keep all of what BWBT already does going with the added needs of doing what we do to help others in our community recover from Hurricane Harvey.

Please consider giving and sharing this post with your friends and family! All of the money donated will go directly to the BWBT account, which  is a 501(c)3, non-profit organization.