An Article by Teresa Laudermilk, Messiah Community & Rex Barrett, Project OKC
It wasn’t too long ago that I happened up on a group here in Oklahoma city that at that time, in its infancy, had as their goal to “connect people”. After reading information on their website, I was still curious, and so I went to the Paseo district, sat down at the restaurant Sliced (great pizza by the way) and I met the “leader” of this group, Rex Barrett, along with several other curious folks. At the meetup, Rex talked about his vision of really showing love to Oklahoma City through service, and he was trying to find other like-minded people to join him. After the meeting, I visisted with him about a project with Burmese refugees in OKC, and at the end he told me “we were just blessed to find this group and that they allowed us to be a part.”
That saying stuck with me and inspired me in many ways, including helping me to find the group Hot Dogs for the Homeless, and through our service there, we have been very blessed, and we are grateful that we have been allowed to join that group in what they do.
In Henry Blackaby’s book, Experiencing God, he states “Find out what God is doing, and join Him in it”, as a way to help his readers understand how to do “missions”. I believe that Rex’s group is one place where God is working in Oklahoma City, and if you, too, are looking to a place to join in and serve — look no further! I will let Rex explain the rest:
I’m Rex Barrett, married to Lanie have a six year old named Beaux with a baby due late October.
ProjectOKC is a group of online and offline friends committed to loving and serving Oklahoma City. We partner with non-profits, churches, schools, civic organizations and businesses to bring good to the community.
It might be a party for urban children, movie night with senior citizens, basketball with students and even random acts of kindness. We want to network with groups and individuals alike, not caring about who gets the credit or recognition. Only caring about the families we are able to connect with.
We use social networks to mobilize volunteers, getting people plugged into volunteer events that are fun because of the personal connections they will make with other volunteers.
ProjectOKC started when I gathered my family and my brother’s family around a table at Sauced Pizza in OKC and said, “what can we do as a group to improve our community.” The group grew and grew and grew! We are now reaching thousands of people every day with our message and have over 250 active volunteers in our network.
Three projects: Our nursing home outreach is FANTASTIC! We are there monthly and only partner with what THEY want to do. We go in without our own agenda, but instead partner with their events. We do suggest ideas and we always let them pick. We’ve done movie nights, manicure & pedicure nights. We’ve been invited to all their holiday events now because we’ve become family.
Art From the Heart is an event that has GROWN. Once a month, we will provide a fun atmosphere for adults and children to meet local artists and create one-of-a-kind pieces of art. The finished projects will be sent to local nursing home residents, foster care children, and to orphanages in war-torn countries. We’ve held this event at Deluxe Oklahoma, an indie craft bazaar and have now been asked to provide volunteers for the children’s area during the State Fair!
Twestival and Raising Haiti were fundraisers we’ve done. We partnered GLOBALLY with non-profits all over and threw a huge party for a local non-profit in our respective communities and also threw a fundraiser for Haiti. We raised thousands of dollars by just hosting community get together. Those were a blast!
It’s really simple to get plugged into ProjectOKC. Head on over to www.LoveOKC.com and sign up. We send out event updates, reminders have a calendar of events and make it really easy for a person to get plugged into a community of people who just want to accomplish some GOOD in our city. You can also follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/projectokc or Facebook at http://facebook.com/projectokc.
Our philosophy is just the same! Partner with people and organizations doing GOOD. The cool thing is that as we’ve grown more PEOPLE have jumped in and we can partner with their visions and dreams for our city. Not only do we ask what we can do for other non-profits we now assist individuals in figuring out how to mobilize individuals to move forward with their dreams too.
For the GOOD of The City,
Rex B. at ProjectOKC
http://LoveOKC.com
