Many of you may have already known that participating shops on Creative Market are donating a percentage of their profits this month to All Hands’ Project Colorado: Flood Relief as part of Creative Market’s ‘Pay it Forward‘ campaign. What you may not be aware of is that recently the Creative Market team came together from all around the world to support All Hands in Colorado. For three days, the Creative Market family came together to help the families and businesses whose lives were impacted by the devastating flooding in Colorado.
During our trip, we worked on four different job sites: Sylvan Dale Ranch, two family homes, and a gymnasium. The work was hard, but also incredibly rewarding, and the team thought the experience was once in a lifetime.
Our CEO’s Thoughts on Project Colorado
Many of you also may not know that Darius, the CEO and co-founder of Creative Market, is co-founder and board member of All Hands. The Creative Market team is so thankful that Darius could take us all on a volunteer project to help others. Darius took the time to share his thoughts and reflections on our team trip to Colorado, and we’re pleased to share them with you below:
“I’ve always wanted to take the Creative Market team to a volunteer project and as the cofounder & board member of All Hands Volunteers, I’m doubly appreciative. As with any disaster, the experience is not what you’d expect. It’s always different and disasters cut such erratic paths of damage through communities… a house can be totally destroyed while the one next door is left hardly touched. The work always changes along with the needs, and that’s why All Hands being so flexible has been so helpful to communities recovering from a natural disaster. Our time in Colorado was an experience and I’m glad I shared it with the team.
Our first day, I worked at a sprawling commercial building that seemed to have business after business tucked into it. All Hands initially started working on the building because it housed an at-risk youth school that had been a literal last chance house for some kids. It has been flooded out and needed to be mucked out, dry wall gutted and then rebuilt. By the time we were on location the school has been gutted and was drying to be rebuilt, but considering how engaged the owner was in his local community and how much he’d been doing to help support not only the school but the other businesses that operated out of his space… we saw that while the postcard you send home from a volunteer trip is probably the picture of helping a homeowner at their house, a small business is an integral part of a community and those out of work while it’s closed are suffering as well. The owner of the building was there all day with us, helping out and many times told us how appreciative he was we were there… he also showed that appreciation by bringing us all pizza for lunch and his wife brought by some fruit at the end of the day.Our second day was more of the postcard picture. We worked on a house that had been flooded up to about a foot of water in the living room on the main floor… and as a house with a basement that is a lot of water damage and mud in a home. I spent all day tearing up wood flooring that had been damaged. Non stop, hard labor for hours on end… but what motivated me the most was that the owner was there with us… down in the basement shoveling the mud out of a basement access window… with his young kids there to help him. His young boy working hard without complaint to help his dad, and his toddler son cruising around with mud all over him. This young one was the same age as my daughter and I couldn’t help but think about what it would be like if this was my home and how stressed out I’d be to get my family back in my home.I’m very appreciative of our team for the time they spent on project volunteering and all the generous support our sellers are donating from their sales. Thank you all so much.
”
What We Learned
We decided to check in with our team to find out what they thought of the trip, see some the responses below:
What did you learn on the All Hands trip?
“I learned that giving of your time and energy to those in need has a deeper impact on the person giving than just sending money. The most transformative experiences seem to always happen in person.”
“I learned that when you look around, life really isn’t so bad after all. Many people have it a lot worse off than we do.”
“It gave me perspective. It’s always helpful to take a step back from our daily lives, and focus on something bigger than ourselves. When you spend a few days ripping out mold-covered drywall, tearing up rotting floorboards, and walking to the end of the street to find a dirty port-a-potty to go to the bathroom, it starts to make all the problems you normally face seem insignificant.”
“One or two nights sleeping on a hard floor will do wonders for back pain. A subsequent night will also do wonders for back pain, but not in a good way.”
“Communities under stress and hardship often shed the brightest light.”
Would you go on another volunteer trip?
“Totally. There is always a need somewhere – whether it be local, national, international, and many different types of urgent needs that require different types of contribution. As exhilarating as tearing out rotted sheetrock and flooring was, I’d like my next experience to be something different than demolition relief of flooded homes.”
“Absolutely.”
“I wish we could have stayed longer. I didn’t want to leave.”
Was this a team building experience?
“Absolutely, but in a very different way than working on digital projects, or going out to a sports or music event together. We had to coordinate how we were gutting the interior spaces, and we experienced compassion together as we saw the home owners on site with us trying to restore their residence.”
“Our team has definitely grown stronger, we got to know ourselves and each other better than ever before.”
“An experience like this beats any ropes course or other team building activity.”
What was your favorite memory from the trip?
“Helping create an incredible burn pile.”
“Our team set-up an “air mattress kingdom” in a back room of the church, and each night we would tell stories of what we experienced that day and crack a lot if jokes all together. Those evenings of decompressing from the day’s hard work were a highlight of the trip for me.”
“Seeing the 14-year-old son who lived in the house we were gutting covered in mud from carrying buckets of sludge out of the basement of his house. When we got there, the basement still had a few inches of water in it. While most tweens these days get a bad rap for being selfishly glued to their mobile devices, it felt good to see the homeowner’s son doing everything he could to help his family get back in their house as soon as possible.”
“When Maryam saw the guy with a hook for a hand.”
“Locking everyone out of the car.”
Any special stories?
“I had the opportunity to bring my wife, and that’s the first time we’ve got to do this type of relief work together which was very special for me. And, at the end of our 2nd day, I cleared out the last bedroom’s moldy wood flooring with Bubs as the little kids who lived in house looked on. That was an especially rewarding moment, too.”
“The dev team spent about an hour on Saturday night trying to fix another volunteer’s laptop. We made a lot of progress and jury rigged some stuff, but, alas, could not help. We did have fun, though.”
Photos from the Creative Market Project Colorado Trip
Wondering what the conditions were like for those of us working in Colorado? Check out some footage from Sylvan Dale Ranch where you can see Maryam, Zack, and Stephen working away around 4:30 into the video below.
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I'm a recent graduate of the University of San Francisco with a degree in Biology and a passion for the creative arts. I love building websites, trying new things, and I have a passion for social media.
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