There’s nothing better than seeing hard work pay off, except maybe seeing your hard work truly help another person. It’s rare in life to see the immediate result of one’s labors.
This weekend the Blindster team experienced one of those rare moments while volunteering for Habitat for Humanity. We were able to see how a simple day’s worth of work could directly impact the less fortunate within our community.
You would think it would be hard to convince a group of busy adults to get up and out at 8 a.m. on a Saturday morning to do physical labor and in most cases, you would be right. 
But when offered the chance to volunteer for Habitat for Humanity, our employees jumped on it. We easily had the largest corporate group on Saturday, September 17, 2016, with 14 volunteers. We only have about 20 employees in the whole company!
Everyone showed up on time, smiling and ready to put in a good day’s work. The neighborhood we were working in was filled with Habitat houses that would be sold to underprivileged families at an affordable mortgage rate, without interest.
As the volunteer leader explained what we were going to accomplish and introduced one of the families that were going to be living in these houses, we began to realize the impact of what we would be doing that day. And with their smiling faces as encouragement, we picked up our ladders and paintbrushes with exuberance.
Even though only a few of us were experienced in building work, each of us was able to help with the task at hand. The house we had the privilege of working on was in its twelfth week of construction.
This meant that we were responsible for doing outside detail work, like painting the trim and caulking windows. Working outside in the Houston heat could have easily been grueling, but everyone stayed positive and kept the jokes flowing.
By the end of the day, we had finished painting the trim and gained a new sense of achievement and camaraderie. There’s just something about being able to look up and see exactly what you have been working for accomplished. 
Even though this is just a small part of the entire home building process, we felt we made a difference. We hope the family who gets to live inside this home creates wonderful, lasting memories and feels the love and teamwork that was poured into the creation of it.