The Bell County Repair Affair completed their 22nd event on Saturday with huge success and an outpouring of help from the community.

There were approximately 250 volunteers that completed work on 13 different homes across Bell County. The jobs that were completed included work such as painting, yard work, pressure washing, and they even built ramps for wheel chairs.

“We didn’t take new applications for wheelchair ramps,” Bell County Repair Affair Coordinator Brian Good said. “We took applications early in spring, and we had several that had been applied for up to that point.”

Repair Affair was created by the Bell-Whitley Community Action Agency and several businesses in Bell County and is a means to offer much needed home repairs and landscape work.

This year participants included Mission of Hope from Knoxville, First State Bank, Home Federal Bank, Community Harvest Tabernacle, Community Trust Bank, Middlesboro ARH, Walmart, Graham Heating and Air Conditioning, Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College, St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, Kentucky Farm Bureau, and a large group of students from the Middlesboro High School football team, basketball team, Key Club, Academic Team and the JROTC.

The goal of Repair Affair is to help as many people as they can on a limited budget.

“We are not funded by any government entity or any grants,” Good explained. “We rely solely on donations and volunteers. We try to make those dollars stretch as far as possible so we can assist more people.”

The goal in helping people is to give them hope, and Good explains that Repair Affair to him means hope because most of the people they assist through Repair Affair have lost hope.

“If you don’t have hope, you don’t have anything,” he said. “We help restore the hope that was once almost lost. You would think the ones receiving the help are being the ones blessed and they usually are, but it’s the volunteers that truly get the blessing.”

The group will begin plans for next year’s Repair Affair and will also be doing other events in the upcoming months. If you have any questions for Bell-Whitley CAA, please call 606-337-3044 and ask for Brian Good.