Volunteer Spotlight: Andy Shapiro

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Readers it’s time for another Volunteer Spotlight, this time featuring Andy Shapiro.

Andy is not from Tennessee. He moved here from California on July 4, 2007, with his family including his wife Caryn and his son Aaron who lives in East Nashville when Andy retired from his civil service job as a firefighter after 33 years. Caryn took a job in the music business managing a nonprofit organization.

Andy has quite a track record of volunteering, and he needed something to do after retiring, so he started with Hope Force training others in first aid, incident command, and disaster response.

He also worked at a food bank for a while. It was there he realized he needed to do more than pack boxes, he needed interaction with other people.

He started volunteering with The Contributor in 2011.

When asked to describe the difference between The Contributor back then versus now, he said in the beginning, the paper was basically a way for the homeless to make money and hopefully get them a bite to eat, and maybe a hotel room for a night or two.

Now, he says, The Contributor is more of a full-service organization walking individuals through the process from start to finish, offering support services including helping people get everything from IDs, providing transportation to/from doctors if needed, helping individuals apply for SNAP benefits, giving bus passes to vendors who qualify by purchasing a specified number of papers.

Once a vendor purchases 40 papers they can meet with an housing navigator and begin the process of applying for and ultimately getting into housing.

All of this is made possible by means of a government grant.

He also said all the volunteers are equally involved in the paper’s and vendor’s success and they actually strive to listen to the vendors.

Bottom line: The paper’s staff and volunteers are willing to do whatever it takes to meet the needs of individuals they serve — all while stressing the importance of building a community among the staff, volunteers, vendors, customers and others in the community.

In another interview Andy credited The Contributor with allowing him to get to know a different part of society, one he might have otherwise not gotten to know.

I am SO glad The Contributor provided him that opportunity, and that he came to the conclusion that he needed those “other people” as staff and vendors alike are now proud to call him their friend!

One other very important thing to know about Andy is he’s both a maker and a fixer, and though he’ll work with anything from metal to wiring to construction, he has a special fondness for wood, and if I may say so, he is truly gifted in that department.

How do I know? During the course of this interview, he showed me a wooden bowl he’d made that was in The Contributor office. It was BEAUTIFUL!

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