By Bill Sendelback

Hearth & Home Technologies (HHT) is certainly a tough competitor in the hearth products industry, but occasionally it has an opportunity to show it’s a company with a heart. Most recently the salesforce of all the HHT brands donated their time and sweat to construct needed facility improvements for a non-profit organization dedicated to serving underprivileged children.

For the last two years at HHT’s national sales meeting, its approximately 130 sales people for the Heatilator, Quadra-Fire, Harman, Vermont Castings, Heat & Glo, Majestic and Monessen brands, have taken on a volunteer project to help a needy non-profit organization.

Last year the HHT sales team came together to paint a school in New Orleans. This year that sales team elected to stay an extra day on their own time following HHT’s national sales meeting to build outdoor projects for the Roy Maas Youth Alternatives’ 40-acre Meadowland Charter School in San Antonio, Texas. The day-long volunteer activities on Thursday, February 16, included constructing two fire pits, a flagstone pathway, outdoor stone benches, improving landscaping and helping to organize the school’s library.

“When we choose a purpose or a cause, we have a few simple, big rules,” says VP Berger, HHT’s president. “It has to be an organization with a mission that we can support, the activity has to engage all of our 130 sales members, and we have to be able to complete the project in a day. This meant a lot of planning and pre-work with the help of the Roy Maas organization and Parrish & Company, our fireplace distributor in San Antonio.”

The progression of volunteers building a small firepit.

Since 1976, the Roy Maas Youth Alternatives (RMYA) organization has been caring for children and families in crisis with services to abused, neglected and high-risk youths. RMYA does this by “promoting individual success and healthy relationships in a safe, healing environment, giving children and families the tools to end the cycle of abuse, according to RMYA’s mission statement.

“This was a great project that benefits our 80 children who love outdoor activities,” says Jennifer Farias, RMYA’s director of volunteers. “The HHT people were such hard workers with no hesitance to do whatever was needed. And HHT was willing ato help with any additional costs that arose. This goes beyond just making our campus beautiful – it provided memories for our children’s lives.”

At the end of the work event, the children of RMYA hosted a surprise donut decorating party for the HHT workers. According to Farias, the day after the event the children were eagerly using the new stone pathway to stay out of muddy grass, and roasting hot dogs in the new fire pits.

The progression of volunteers building a walkway.

“It’s always rewarding to finish a project and know you have created an environment that will create memories for the kids,” says Berger. “What was not expected and was emotional for us were the cards from the kids thanking us for ‘spending time’ with them. Their message had nothing to do with the material items we left behind. It was all about the personal interaction and their appreciation for the one-on-one connections.

“It’s extremely rewarding to see how much good can be done when you get a group of people to give their time, talent and treasures. Yes, this was great for the kids at RMYA, but it also was a great team-building event for us and our distributor, Parris & Company.”

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