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Kathy grew up with a brother who has special needs. Lynn spent twelve years with her family in special needs camps. They didn’t come to Wonderfully Made as strangers to this community. They came as people who finally found the room they had been looking for.

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Some volunteers find their way to Wonderfully Made through curiosity. They hear about the program, they want to see it, they show up one Tuesday and never quite stop.

Kathy arrived through history.

Her brother has special needs. She grew up in the same household, navigating the same world, watching from the inside as the gaps opened up year after year. She understands in a way that most volunteers never will what it means to love someone who doesn’t always have access to the spaces he deserves. So when she found Wonderfully Made — a program built specifically to create those spaces — she didn’t hesitate.

I think about Kathy often when people ask me who our volunteers are. She is not here to feel good about herself. She is here because this community is personally meaningful. There is a difference, and it shows in how she shows up.

Her favorite cookie is oatmeal raisin. She has been on the Goodyear Blimp, which she shares with the quiet pride of someone who has a good story and knows exactly when to tell it.

Lynn got here a different way. Her family spent twelve years involved with special needs camps — twelve years of building community for children and families who needed it. When that season of her family’s life shifted, she didn’t look for a way out of the work. She looked for the next room.

She found it at Wonderfully Made. She describes what she sees in the Wonder Makers’ eyes as the reason she keeps coming back.

“The wonder in their eyes.”

When Lynn says that, she is not speaking casually. She is speaking from twelve years of watching what happens when people with intellectual disabilities find a space that genuinely welcomes them. She knows the difference between a program that tolerates people and a community that delights in them. What she sees here is the latter, and it keeps her coming back.

Lynn calls herself a cowgirl stuck in Atlanta. Her favorite cookie is the gluten-free oatmeal butterscotch. She volunteers because the wonder in those eyes is the most honest thing she has ever seen, and she wants to be part of what creates it.

One of the things I have worked hardest to build at Wonderfully Made is a volunteer culture that is worth belonging to — where people don’t come out of obligation and leave out of burnout but come because they’re drawn to something real and stay because it keeps being real. Kathy and Lynn are evidence that we’re building that. They are not just volunteering for the Wonder Makers. They have found something for themselves.

That is the community Wonderfully Made is building. Not just a program for the Wonder Makers. A belonging for everyone who walks through the door.

Your Tuesday is waiting

The Wonder Crew is a community of people who show up because they want to — and leave changed because they did. Join us at wonderfullymadecommunity.org/get-involved/volunteer.