Melanie Brady is the volunteer coordinator for Samaritans Purse.
She got first got involved with Sam's purse in high high school because of Operation Christmas Child Shoe Boxes and continues to do it every year. In 2014 she did her first disaster relief trip for a tornado in Arkansas. She was scheduled for three days and ended up staying for a whole week. Melanie loved it and didn’t want to go home, she said, “You’re just out there serving people and meeting homeowners and hearing their stories and it was just incredible.” Since 2014, she went on two more disaster relief trips and every time she thought, "why am i not doing this full time, why is this not my everyday life?" In 2017, Melanie was unemployed at the time hurricane Harvey hit. She went to Houston to volunteer for two weeks. While she was there, some of the site leaders saw something in her and asked why wasn’t she always doing this. She was encouraged to see if she'd want to be a full time volunteer. Melanie went home and thought about it and eventually the volunteer coordinator position opened up. “Out of all the people in the world, there is no way I'm getting this job.” she thought. She applied just to say she did and to show she tried. Much to Melanie's surprise, she got the phone call that she got the job. She started a month later and has loved working with new people who come every week and are willing to serve and help the community. When asked what service means to her, she replied, “To me, service is meeting a need whatever that may be. Whether you see someone that is thirsty and needs a drink of water or is hungry and needs some food or someone who’s house got blown away and they need a place to live, its whatever you can do to help see that need."
Melanie moved to Rockport on January 2nd of 2018 and has been here just over a year. She said its been full stem ahead ever since. I was curious how Sam's Purse kept consistantly getting volunteers. Since that is a part of her job, I picked her brain. They schedule people four months in advance. When I asked her why she thought people wanted to volunteer she said, “I think once people do one disaster trip they kinda get hooked and they wanna come again and again.” People find out about the hurricane Harvey relief work through word of mouth. Melanie said "Sometimes it colleges sometimes it's individuals or families. Every different type of group has come to serve. They see the need and they wanna come and serve. Melanie graduated college with a degree in Sociology. Hannah and I asked her how she is able to apply her degree to what she does now and she told us working with a new group coming in every Sunday, she’s able to study people. She has to figure out how to get people plugged in and appeal to different publics. Being the volunteer coordinator comes with its challenges. When asked what has been the most challenging part of the job, Melanie said, "Honestly, for me I'm an introvert. Being in front of people every single day has been challenging but I’ve also seen God take that and just grow me in ways that I didn't expect.”
