This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Sept. 1, 2011 - It seemed like a small thing.
Last year, during the 9/11 Day of Service and Remembrance, volunteers cleaned the bedrooms and bathrooms of teenagers staying at Youth in Need. The young people weren't at the St. Charles-based child and family services nonprofit, but signs of them were, like pairs of shoes and toothbrushes.
One volunteer took on the boys' bathroom, says Lucy Bordewick, with Youth in Need. He saw that the boys didn't have good toothbrushes or deodorant or body wash.
So he left, quietly, and came back with three grocery bags full of those things.
Bordewick doesn't think he knew what it meant to those young men when they walked into their clean and fully stocked bathroom later that day.
It seemed like a small thing.
But for kids who often show up with nothing more than a plastic bag of possessions, it was huge.
This year, Youth In Need is among the 170 local organizations you can volunteer with, for an hour, half a day, a day, or the whole week during the 9/11 Week of Service and Remembrance.
"We have a wide range of opportunities," says Evan Krauss, manager of the volunteer center with the United Way of Greater St. Louis.
Projects need anywhere from 10 to 1,000 people, he says, and require people of a variety of ages to work with organizations from Madison County to St. Charles County and everything in between.
Signature projects, which all happen on 9/11, include the East St. Louis Community Impact Project, which will use volunteers to beautify the area in a number of ways; the Greenwood Cemetery Restoration Project, working to clean up the historic black cemetery; the Memorial Park Cleanup Project, which is being led by teenagers from St. Louis Volunteen; and the O'Fallon Patriot Projects, which include a number of events in O'Fallon throughout the day, from decorating cards for service members and their families and cleaning up streets to a blood drive.
The National Day of Service and Remembrance was created in 2002 by two New Yorkers. In 2009, federal legislation recognized 9/11 as a National Day of Service and Remembrance. 911day.org offers people the opportunity to share what they'll do in tribute by uploading videos, sharing memories for a tribute quilt or sharing plans of what they will do that day. According to serve.gov, from the Corporation for National and Community Service, 1 million people are expected to serve their communities through projects on 9/11.
"The best way to honor the first responders and the victims of that tragedy is to get out and do something for your community," says Tom Drabelle, director of public relations with the city of O'Fallon.
In 2010, according to the United Way, about 1,000 people volunteered on 9/11.
This year, Krauss says, the goal -- over the 10 days of service beginning Sept. 6 and running through Sept. 16 -- is for 5,000 people to participate.
And then, he says, to keep on volunteering.
"Our hope is that the Day of Service is a catalyst for ongoing civic engagement and volunteering," Krauss says.
In O'Fallon, Drabelle already sees that happening.
"If we can get people to come out and volunteer, the vast majority of volunteers continue to do so," he says.
Some events, like the Memorial Park Cleanup Project, include big gestures in memory of the day, such as creating a temporary memorial of flags in honor of everyone who died day 10 years ago.
Other projects, though, might seem smaller, like cleaning the temporary home of teens, making blankets for children in foster care or entertaining the elderly at area nursing homes.
They might seem like small things, but to the people they help, Bordewick says, they're not.