During the Share Kindness Experience we were fortunate to partner with Team Rubicon. This inspiring organization unites skilled and experienced veterans with first responders to rapidly deploy emergency response teams to areas in need. We are thrilled to highlight what kindness means to Team Rubicon through a guest blog from Mike Lee, their Marketing Officer. 

Team Rubicon is a disaster response organization that utilizes the skills of military veterans and first responders to provide immediate relief to communities across the world. In 2016 alone, we responded to 46 disasters and helped hundreds of families recover from wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes.

For many of the veteran volunteers in Team Rubicon, this service is a cathartic experience. Serving communities affected by disasters provides a new sense of purpose and a role in a larger mission that brings focus into their lives. Working and sweating alongside dozens of service-minded men and women wearing the same grey Team Rubicon t-shirt and dirty boots while removing debris from tornado-damaged homes forges new friendships and connections. But it’s the shared experience of serving others in need that allows kindness to shine through.

Because everything Team Rubicon is able to accomplish is built upon kindness. It takes thousands of individuals donating their time and money for us to respond to events like Hurricane Matthew and the recent fires in Tennessee.

Kindness at Team Rubicon is a volunteer traveling across the country, giving up their vacation time to help communities in need. It’s a homeowner giving bear hugs to every relief worker who helped them gut their flooded basement.

It’s the community that comes together to prepare home-cooked meals for all the volunteers helping them rebuild.

And it’s the new volunteer who isn’t sure if they’ll fit in – perhaps because of their politics, sexual orientation, or faith – but then soon realizes the common desire to serve and help others overcomes all these differences, and unites us all in our desire to be agents of kindness.

Kindness works like a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it gets, and the more work it can do. Over the past 6 years we’ve deployed thousands of people across the country and around the world. The good we’ve been able to do is a testament to the kindness of our donors and volunteers.

At Team Rubicon, we believe kindness is a gift – and we do our best to pay it forward.