Rolling up in his truck before dawn, Matias Pedreira knew Aug. 15 would be the best day of the year.
Twelve hours of work was ready to take form thanks to six months of detailed planning.
“We do a S.W.O.T. analysis with our staff to discuss what went well and what we need to improve after each project,” Pedreira explained. “Then we analyze things again.”
The project requiring all that analysis?
Paint Your Heart Out (PYHO), a day bringing together hundreds of volunteers to beautify the homes of veterans, seniors, people with disabilities and limited-income families.
Over 40 years, NeighborWorks Salt Lake has orchestrated the painting of nearly 900 homes through PYHO to help revitalize Utah neighborhoods through community preservation and collaboration. This was Pedreira’s second year leading the effort as the nonprofit’s director of Community Initiatives and Marketing.
Jared Witte also did his own meticulous planning the week leading up to his first Paint Your Heart Out.
“I met with the homeowner, and I’d gathered extra ladders, drop cloths and scrapers,” he said. “I tried to make sure we had too much gear rather than not enough.”
The residential upgrades business is an everyday focus for Witte as a Financing Software Products team manager with Regions Home Improvement Finance. But on this day, he was leading 10 bank teammates as they scraped, rolled and brushed their hearts out.
When Pedreira visited Regions’ assigned home on project day, his immediate observation solidified why Witte was perfect for the role.
“When I looked at everybody working on different parts of the house, I thought, ‘This is amazing,’” said Pedreira. “We give that advice in orientation, but seeing it in practice, oh man, it was so great.”
Witte’s divide-and-conquer approach was by design.
“There’s just not enough physical space to put 10 people on a small section of the house,” he explained. “We split the team based on their strengths and what they like so we could work in parallel in different areas. You’re able to start people at different areas, and slowly, the whole building gets done at the same time.”
To Pedreira and his teammate, Luis Pineda, the group’s completion time didn’t seem slow at all.
“They got done super early,” said Pineda, who serves as NeighborWorks Salt Lake’s Resource and Development Manager. “I remember being a little jealous. We had a smaller house, but they finished well before we did.”
Not to worry, Witte and crew didn’t cut any corners.
“Everyone had the desire to do a good job,” he said. “It was like they were working on their own house, ensuring it was done right and done well.”
Witte observed another trait his teammates all brought to the jobsite.
“Everyone had a great attitude,” he said. “Even though scraping paint isn’t the most fun thing, everyone was there with a positive, wanting to get it done attitude.”
And get it done they did.
“It was a cool thing to see something being transformed due to the team putting effort toward it,” said Witte. “You’ve accomplished something physical you can see, and it all happens in a day. It was a great teambuilding exercise.”
That appreciation of each home’s transformation extends well beyond the team doing it.
“It’s about seeing how happy the homeowners are,” said Pedreira. “And often, we also have neighbors say, ‘Oh, the house looks beautiful; I’m so glad you’re doing this.’ Yes, we are serving one person, one name, one story at a time, but it’s hundreds of lives we touch.”
That impact gets Pedreira out of bed each day.
“Everything that is valuable or makes sense or is rewarding in life is when you do it in community,” he said. “We come together for a couple of hours, we make something wonderful, we share, and we get to know each other. It’s about not forgetting we all build this community together.”
Pedreira is grateful to welcome Regions to the Paint Your Heart Out community.
“We cannot do this without the volunteers,” he said. “Jared was very passionate; he did an amazing job that day – and Regions was organized. They also did extra things beyond the painting project the homeowners were grateful for like raking the backyard. They were such a great team to work with.”