GREENE – It was ten years ago that Jim Willard and a group of volunteers made a difference in one woman’s life. These volunteers formed The Impact Project, a non-profit 501c3 organization.

The Impact Project is dedicated to making home repairs for the elderly and low income residents of the community.

Ten years ago, the founders of The Impact Project were just volunteers at a local church. These volunteers were enlisted to clear the snow off of an elderly woman’s roof but found her back porch to be unsafe. After the snow melted in the spring, Willard called in over 100 volunteers to help repair the porch at no cost to the woman.

“We found that the porch was incredibly unsafe, so we decided to completely tear it down and build a new one,” said Willard. “Afterwards, we all kind of said ‘hey this is cool, why not make it a once a year thing?’”

Willard and the rest of the volunteers quickly agreed to do something like that once per year.

“We quickly found ourselves two months later doing a similar project and knew that we couldn’t just make it a once a year project,” said Willard. “The idea for The Impact Project was born from there.”