LEFT: Keith Wasserman (center), founder and executive director of Good Works, shares conversation at a recent lunch at Hannah House, its long-term care facility. Volunteers, recipients, and staff commune at these meals several times a week. Good Works also hosts weekly Friday Night Life suppers; 120-150 people without homes as well as people from the community attend these sit-down, family-style occasions. —Caption by Maygan Beeler BSJ ’17
without trust, Wasserman adds. And he insists that the disadvantaged be “clothed in dignity” to allow them to change some parts of themselves while honoring others. The more Good Works—which relies on donations—gives back, the more its beneficiaries do, too, he finds. Devotion to Christianity guides his work. Specifically, he feels called to serve, considers it a privilege to ameliorate. Wasserman spoke with Ohio Today by phone about succor, spirituality, and how the two blend. Edited excerpts follow. Ohio Today: What inspired you to start Good Works?
Keith Wasserman: My faith. I had become a Christian in high school. I grew up in the Jewish community of Cleveland, Ohio— Cleveland Heights and University Heights— and I became a Christian in a little town outside of Dayton called Centerville at the age of 16 going on 17. And my worldview began to change as I read the Bible and I began to realize that God had a value for people. I began to have a similar kind of [way of] looking at people with compassion, and my motivation to help people began to emerge for me. You have to understand, I was a drug addict between the age of 12 to the age of 17, so something was being covered up in that drug abuse era that was revealed and unveiled by faith. OT: The Good Works mission is to “create and sustain a community of hope.” What does that look like?
KW: Well, it’s important to me that people
feel loved and respected. So much of the system that people who are vulnerable have to interact with is harsh. We desire to counter that with compassion, with respect. … To be a community of hope means we can interact with people and they leave us in a much better mental, emotional, and spiritual state than when they first met us. OT: What are some programs offered through Good Works?
KW: One of the more exciting things we’re doing now is Service Living, which is our campus initiative where we’re inviting [about 50] OHIO students to get off campus within the first year and to get into the county and to develop service-based relationships [for people with disabilities, at the end of their lives, or struggling with poverty]. These are not project-based relationships. … I differentiate to say that we want the students to get to know the people … [and their and the region’s] history, values, needs, and beauty. … We [also] now have 19 gardens in the county. We are doing a lot with agriculture and helping people grow their own food. So, we have three community gardens and then the rest are all at homes of widows or citizens who have a disability. … Another very large initiative is our program called Neighbors Helping Neighbors [aiding the elderly or disabled low-income homeowners]. We’ll have 50 groups of volunteers this year. These are people that come from all over Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Michigan, [and] Illinois. They come for weeklong stays. They stay in our dormitories during the summer or long weekends in the fall and spring. Most of these are partnerships with religious communities [and] churches, and they are intergenerational, which is really exciting to us. This is an important value where we have children working alongside adults and service towards others in rural Appalachia.
OT: What’s it mean to be a Bobcat alumnus giving back to the Athens area?
KW: I love Athens. It’s just a wonderful city. I’ve chosen to stay and raise my family here. [The Wassermans have a son, Timothy, 25, a night staffer at Good Works and a volunteer with Central Avenue United Methodist Church. Timothy House was named after him.] I have a great love for Ohio University, and it’s very energizing to work with students for the most part. … The University has been very supportive of me personally and of the institution that I’ve created. So I just have a lot of gratitude. OT: What is the most rewarding part of your job?
KW: First of all, it’s a gift to be invited into relationships with people who are vulnerable. When I see their vulnerability and whether their vulnerability is based on age or disability or a situation, I feel very protective of them. I feel that this is a gift in and of itself. I have power and I pledge to use my power for good. So what gives me joy is to use my power for good and to see someone really experience love and to see their facial expressions change, their countenance change, to see them come into opportunities and believe in them and to see them take advantage of the opportunities they are given or simply to console them or to—as the Bible teaches us—weep with those who weep. … Second to that is facilitating these experiences for others and helping them to grow [as a result]. … As I am present with other volunteers and staff, and we get to experience things together, helping people, or just grieving with people, it does something to our whole sense of community, about who we enjoy being with. And so, you know, the work that we do is hard at times. But it’s a lot easier when you’re doing it with people who share the same love and values for others that you have. » MAKENZIE BOWKER BSJ ’11
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