Volunteer Spotlight on Annette

Written by a wonderful volunteer

When I met Annette Parker, I knew one thing: She’d recently spent a couple weeks emptying the compost bins on 4 of our toilets. That wasn’t what she signed up to do when she joined TE, and one of the first things I noticed was her lovely manicure.

Annette is newly retired from her governmental job of Lands, Rec, and Range where she issued permits to ranchers for grazing and helped people negotiate the governmental bureaucracy to get permits for their driveway that happened to cross public lands.

After retirement, Annette moved from the New Castle area to the Grand Valley to provide a bit of assistance to her parents. On a whim, she Googled “volunteer opportunities in Grand Junction” and Toilet Equity showed up.

“I’d been sitting in front of a computer in my job with the government and wanted something active,” said Annette. “I like the idea of building toilets and the mission of the project.”

“People should have access to a toilet. It’s about dignity,” she says.

Although she hasn’t done a ton of carpentry, building is something she enjoys. She joined Toilet Equity’s founder, Paul Padyk, on the building crew and it was fun. “Put screws here. Hold this there. The toilet went up in no time.”

She’d love to learn enough that she could lead the building projects, but, “It’s hard to picture that now because I’ve got a lot to learn.”

Always flexible, Annette started as a volunteer to build toilets, but when Paul went out of town and there was no one to maintain the emptying of all the compost bins, Annette was willing to pickup the slack. “I’m flexible,” she says.

I was wondering about emptying those bins that are full of poop as I looked at her beautiful manicure. I asked her to tell me about the process of changing out the bins.

“You just pull the bin out of the toilet. They have tight fitting lids. Then you put a clean one in. We loaded them into the back of Wendy’s SUV. Even being in the car with 4 bins, there was no smell. It’s all locked in.” Annette reports all this with aplomb. It’s clear that, although the build team is where she wants to be, changing out compost bins was no big deal.

“Then we took all the bins to the big compost pile at Paul’s house. We removed the lids, and together with Wendy, we dumped the contents into the pile. Then we put some more hay over it and that mountain of compost does its thing.” Manicure intact.

“We washed out the bins. Nothing sticks to the sides because of the sawdust. Wash ‘em. Rinse ‘em and stack ‘em for the next delivery.” The whole process for 4 toilets was only 2 hours. Clearly, Annette isn’t afraid of manual labor.

When I asked about the smell, “Not bad,” she reports. And I can tell it was no big deal. Toilet Equity really appreciates her willingness to change lanes and pick up the slack.

This article originally appeared in our July 2024 Newsletter.