Honoring 9/11 through service

By Emma Peterson. 

Learn how the SRS Raise the Roof Foundation is working with 9/11 Day to transform September 11 into the nation’s largest day of service. 

Recently, Heidi J. Ellsworth sat down with Mikell Bollinger, VP of community engagement for SRS Raise the Roof Foundation, for a Roofing Road Trips® episode all about giving back to our communities. In particular, the duo discussed the SRS partnership with the nonprofit 9/11 Day that is working to honor the lives lost on 9/11 by creating a day of service. The partnership between the SRS Raise the Roof Foundation and 9/11 Day goes back to July 2023. Mikell explained, “A couple of years ago, Eric Payne, who happens to be the brother of the co-founder of 9/11 Day nonprofit David Payne and was their VP of partnerships at the time, reached out to Dan Tinker, the SRS CEO and president.”  

Eric shared the story of the 9/11 Day nonprofit, which was founded by David and Jay Winnick with the goal of honoring the lives lost on 9/11 (which includes Jay’s younger brother Glenn, a volunteer firefighter) by organizing a day of service on September 11 each year. As Mikell puts it, “Really, the mission is to do something good, to turn something tragic into something beautiful, into a day of service, and bring back that feeling of unity and commitment, putting aside differences and everybody working together for the greater good.” 

So, when Dan and the SRS team got the call from Eric about participating in one of their 9/11 Days of service, it was an immediate yes. Mikell elaborated, “We took a look at it from a board standpoint after we learned more about the organization, and just decided this was an incredible opportunity for us, not just in the Dallas-Fort Worth area to serve, but throughout the country. And so we made a commitment to try to have volunteers in every one of those cities in 2023, and that's how we got started with them.” 

Now, two years later, 9/11 Day is the biggest day of service in America with more than 30 million people participating. Mikell shared a bit about the experience volunteering at one of these events, saying, “Regardless of where your venue is, this year in the Dallas-Fort Worth area it’ll be the Globe Life Field, you check in and then there’s a commemoration for the anniversary of 9/11. So, usually there’s a short video about September 11, a moment of silence and sometimes there’s a speaker, someone in the local community that has a personal link to the day. And then you get to work.” That work is often packing up meals that will be sent around the community to those in need. Mikell described, “Everyone starts out at workstations and then table captains bring the ingredients to you and you start off '’feeding the funnel,’ as they call it. So, you take the base product, put it into a bag that then gets passed to your next station member that adds more ingredients, it goes on down the line... And as you’re packing, there’s music and pauses when you hit certain milestones of meals packed, it’s a lot of fun and it’s really just powerful to see everybody working together for a common goal of alleviating hunger in their community.” 

Listen to the full episode to learn more about the SRS Raise the Roof Foundation and the 9/11 day of service.