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Scott Detrow (3:06)

NPR on a day of giving thanks we wanted to thank you, our listeners who have for months been sharing stories about how you help others through volunteering. You've also shared stories about others in your community who spend their time giving back. We have received hundreds of hundreds of responses from all across the country. You nominated volunteer librarians and Scout leaders. You told us stories of volunteering in food pantries and municipal boards, even community compost groups. Here are just a few examples of those. James and Hillary Cornwell are a married couple who have volunteered as medieval reenactors in middle school classrooms for 35 years.

James Cornwell (3:42)

Don't worry, they've got armor.

Hillary Cornwell (3:44)

We bring real metal and leather pieces of armor for kids to try on. And while they're replicas, the pieces have been built to the same standards of durability that the real ones were made four centuries ago. My wife and I got into this line of volunteer work when we had just gotten together as a couple in the early 1990s. We were in our 20s when we started visiting middle school classrooms. Now all of us are old enough to be the seventh graders grandparents. Well, there's a sense of fulfillment in volunteering in classrooms and in keeping connected with kids. Now that our own children are grown, some of the motivation is selfish. The students keep us sharp.

Scott Detrow (4:17)

Jake Sale is a professional usher at San Francisco's War Memorial Opera House. He called us to nominate the people who volunteered to work with him during performances.

Jake Sale (4:27)

There's a quiet dignity in what they do, greeting first time opera goers with a smile, guiding lost audience members through ornate hallways, standing for hours just to make sure somebody else has a beautiful night. Working alongside them has changed the way I think about service. It's not always about grand gestures. It's small acts of steadiness.

Scott Detrow (4:48)

Alan Smith Hicks nominated his mother, Sandra hicks from Manchester, New Hampshire, who passed away in 2020.

Hillary Cornwell (4:54)

She was the hardest working retired person I've ever known.

James Cornwell (4:57)

In the 1970s, she was legally blind.

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But for almost 50 years she dedicated her life to volunteerism, activism, advocacy, community.

Ransom Miller (5:07)

Education and social justice.

Scott Detrow (5:15)

Thanksgiving week is one of the biggest.

James Cornwell (5:17)

Times for volunteering across the country, so.

Scott Detrow (5:20)

We wanted to check out one of those efforts close to us in the Washington area.

Meaty Bardinelli (5:24)

For Cheddar Cheese, line A will be the Girl Scouts and Line B for Cheddar Cheese will be the Jack and Jail.

Scott Detrow (5:31)

National harbor this past Saturday, hundreds of volunteers from local high schools, colleges and historically black Greek letter organizations packed the student center at the University of the District of Columbia. They had a pretty straightforward to feed as many people as possible. Everyone was clamoring to speak with Ransom Miller, who was making sure there weren't any gaps in assembly line action.

Ransom Miller (5:53)

I want one person on each side and then y' all rotate. Is that good?

Scott Detrow (5:57)

Miller is the founder and chair of the nonprofit Project Give Back. It holds one of the largest annual Thanksgiving food distributions in the Mid Atlantic region. Meaty Bardinelli is been volunteering with Project Give Back for more than 20 years and remembers back when things were a little bit slimmer on the volunteer side. She said she's especially glad to see people getting involved this year when the government shutdown paused SNAP benefits for so many people when federal workers in the region went more than a month without a paycheck.

Meaty Bardinelli (6:27)

So I believe that this year's Project Give Back continues, not just this year, continues to show the importance of food insecurity. It's imperative that Maslow's hierarchy of needs starts off with food, clothing and shelter. And so if we don't have food to sustain us, then it's a no go. It's a non starter, right?

Scott Detrow (6:46)

Jamir Farrer, a college student at the Naval Academy, said he had everything he could have ever wanted growing up, so it's important for him to take the opportunity to help people who are less fortunate. He carried a box full of food that will help one of thousands of families.

Ransom Miller (7:01)

Chicken stuffing, elbow noodles, cheese flounder, carrots. I grabbed some pork or something of that nature.

Scott Detrow (7:11)

He was taking direction from project leader Ransom Miller. Miller recently stopped by NPR studio to talk about the origins of Project Give Back. He recalled how the initial idea took shape as he was talking to a few co workers.

Ransom Miller (7:24)

Actually, we were in a lunchroom lamenting over how blessed we were and how fortunate we were as young professionals.

James Cornwell (7:33)

This was at your place of work?

Ransom Miller (7:35)

Yeah. So this was at tcba, which is a local accounting firm, and just a lunchroom conversation that really people jumped into and shared how blessed they felt. You know, there was a homeless population downtown D.C. at that time and we had just come in, talked to a couple people who were going through some hard times and that conversation turned into, hey, why don't we do something for somebody else this Thanksgiving? And, and you know, everybody was supportive of it. And that year we helped six families for Thanksgiving. Initially that was a great thing to do, but it was no big vision of what we have now just a.

James Cornwell (8:18)

Few people at work, kind of on the fly, helping a handful of families.

Ransom Miller (8:22)

Yeah. And I think what happened was those same people came back the next year and said, hey, what are we doing this year? And I was like, well, I don't know. What do you mean? Oh, you know, the project where we gave back to the community and we gave food baskets. I was like, well, let's do it again, let's do it again. He said, well, what are you calling this thing? And he had just said those words together. So I said, well, we're gonna call it Project Give Back.

James Cornwell (8:48)

Help people understand just how big we're talking here. Like, what's the best way to understand the scope of this in 2025?

Ransom Miller (8:55)

Well, I think maybe close to a thousand volunteers getting up some at 5 in the morning to pack boxes for somebody else. I think that's a big way to look at it because we are a volunteer organization. Nobody gets paid. We don't have any paid staff. All of the money that we raise goes into our programming. But we've assembled a team of people who have made that a seamless process.

James Cornwell (9:23)

How many people do you get food to each year?

Ransom Miller (9:26)

Last year was 5,000.

James Cornwell (9:28)

Okay.

Ransom Miller (9:28)

This year we're actually. It's a funny story. My 11 year old son Harrison asked me, how many families are we helping this year? And I said, about 5,000. So he said, hmm, okay. He said, well, how many did we do last year? I said, about 5,000. He said, well, don't you think we should do more? And I was like, what do you mean? You know? And immediately I started thinking, well, that's more money to raise. That's more coordination. And I started thinking about it and then I just heard his voice and he was very confident. He's like, well, I think we should do more.

James Cornwell (10:03)

Well, I'm wondering if maybe the increased focus on the safety net that we've seen across the country and here in D.C. thousands of federal workers went more than a month without a paycheck. We saw a disruption in SNAP benefits. There's a real focus on, on food assistance in the way that I don't think we've seen in a long time. How have you seen that from your point of view?

Ransom Miller (10:24)

I think doing this type of work, we see every year how hard it is for certain families. I'm talking about two parent households working, having trouble making ends meet. It's troubling to a lot of people, but it's not a surprise because we know that there's definitely a need in this area and probably across the country. But there's a need in this area for food assistance. But this problem, the SNAP benefits and the federal government shutdown exacerbated that problem. We have never gotten the amount of calls that we got this year. But I think there's something called positive peer pressure. If you're doing something that's good and your peer is looking around and saying, well, maybe I should be doing something like that. And that's what we hope to do. I think that's one of the reasons we've been able to expand, expand. So we're doing this on what we call Give Back Saturday, and we're doing this in Washington, D.C. maryland and Virginia, but we're also doing it in Oklahoma City, which is my hometown. We're also doing it in Indianapolis, Indiana.

James Cornwell (11:27)

You're franchising it, basically.

Ransom Miller (11:30)

Basically. And what better to franchise than service and helping other people?

Scott Detrow (11:35)

That's Ransom Miller, the founder and chair of the nonprofit Project Give Back, which has held a Thanksgiving food distribution for more than 30 years now.

James Cornwell (11:43)

Thank you so much for coming in.

Ransom Miller (11:44)

Yes.

James Cornwell (11:45)

Happy Thanksgiving.

Ransom Miller (11:46)

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Scott Detrow (11:48)

As you just heard, the first year that Ransom Miller did Project Give back, it fed six families. This year it provided food for more than 5,700 families. You can hear more stories focused on service, community and Giving Back year round@npr.org heretohelp. This episode was produced by Matt Ozug, Jason Fuller and Janaki Meadow. It was edited by Ashley Brown. Our executive producer is Sami Yenigun. It's Consider this from npr. I'm Scott Detrow.

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