Background
Today and Beyond...
Some of our current service areas include:
- Home Construction and Restoration – provide construction and restoration services to homes of displaced families and homes of historic value.
- Green Space and Blue Way Management – focuses on preserving the natural habitat and the natural beauty of the Gulf Coast.
- Tobacco Free education – youth, family, school, and business education and outreach to eliminate tobacco-related illnesses and death.
- Youth Service Leadership Corps (YSLC) - peer-to-peer and youth/adult volunteer leadership programs created and led by the youth.
- Vulnerable populations – works with local homeless day centers to create a community through direct service, special events and programming.
- Immigrant populations – provide service to non-English speaking coastal residents to ensure inclusion in coastal events and services
- Service Days – focus on designing and implementing community projects and National Days of Service.
Centrally located in Gulfport on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, Hands On Mississippi is dedicated to meeting the needs of our communities through volunteerism.
Early Beginnings...
Originally Hands On Disaster Response and Hands on Network, we began work on the Mississippi Gulf Coast in 2005 as a direct response to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in August 2005. When in 2007 Hands On Network merged with the Points of Light Foundation - creating this country's largest volunteer engagement organization known as POLHON - Hands on Gulf Coast became an affiliate of POLHON while forming its own organization solely focused on Mississippi.
Hands On Gulf Coast, an independent affiliate integrally and permanently a part of Mississippi, has grown and expanded to address not only disaster recovery but other needs in our communities. Because of this, we started in 2010 to do business as Hands On Mississippi to encompass our true reach of service and focus.