Neways North America Blog

This post’s guest writer is Tabitha Plake, a Neways distributor from Nixa, Missouri. On October 24, 2011, Tabitha and her husband were given the chance to volunteer for Extreme Makeover: Home Edition’s biggest build to date: “7 homes in 7 days” in Joplin, Missouri.

Just for a little background, in May 2011 Joplin, Missouri, experienced an EF5 triple vortex tornado with winds at over 200 miles per hour. From the aerial views of Joplin, it looked like a large section of the area had had a big eraser come through to erase homes, schools, businesses, and trees. When Neways heard of the disaster, within days they sent $12,000 in products to Joplin through Feed the Children.

Then in August, we read in our local newspaper that TV’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition was coming to Joplin. We really wanted to participate in this, so we registered online, hoping.

We were soon notified by email that we were confirmed to work on October 24, and we were so excited! Later I learned that 10,000 volunteers were needed and 13,000 volunteers actually participated. On the job site that week, one lady said she thought that 100,000 had actually volunteered. Wow!

We had fantastic weather that week for the “7 homes in 7 days,” and that made it so good! As we drove into Joplin, much of the city looked normal until we got down near 26th Street. We parked just west across the street from the hospital that you may have seen on the news back in May. It’s my understanding that every last window in the hospital was shattered. You can still see pictures on the web of the hospital with a red helicopter and numerous vehicles badly damaged in front of it. I believe over 7,000 homes were destroyed.

Neways came through again in an amazing way. On October 17 they shipped seven Convert Your Bathroom Packs for us to give to these seven families. We wrote a letter and shared a few of our reasons for loving Neways, congratulated them on their new home, added a catalog, and put the packs in bright neon-green bags with all that beautiful tissue paper.

After delivering these to “Bin City” at the job site, we turned in our paperwork, received our T-shirts and hard hats, and went to work. Our first assignment was delightful. We (about 20 people) were told to wait in front of one of the new homes. We waited for a little bit, then heard it whispered that a designer was going to come tape a scene for the TV show. We were going to be needed right in the middle of it. A few minutes later, designer Paul DiMeo came and the camera crew taped part of the show. They thanked a company from North Carolina that provided all exterior materials for the homes (including cedar, stone, metal, and windows). John and I were part of the group of volunteers that were right in the middle of that
taping. We had so much fun!

For the rest of the day, I worked in Bin City, which is actually a collection of semi-trailers, one for each home. I got to meet the Crate & Barrel truck driver who had come down from Chicago. We walked boxes of lighting, for example, through the littered terrain over to the home for installation that day. We sorted, organized, helped unload vehicles. By the time it was dark, I had a splitting headache. It could
have been caused by my special “hat,” or it could have been the wonderful sun we’d enjoyed all day. I had one more Acai Action in my little travel pouch. (It was my third one: one in the morning, one around 2:00 p.m. and now this one around 7:30 p.m.) My headache went away.

After our shift was done, John and I stood at the first home. He’d been there doing dry wall finishing that day, and we were watching the speedy landscaping team shovel mulch. While standing there, a production assistant asked us to appear in another scene with Paul DiMeo. Four takes later and we were done there, and then we had a chance to walk along the street past the other houses. They all had new landscaping nearly completed. It was just amazing to see the number of volunteers working on such a huge variety of projects all at once!

At the end of the street, we got a chance to see designer Michael Maloney doing a “kingly” comedy sketch for the show—and he spoke to me! OK, I was pinching myself. We were really here, not seeing this on TV—ha!

On Wednesday, the show welcomed all the families to their new homes. They all had been made a little healthier through the generosity of Neways! Welcome home, Joplin families. Welcome home!