Helping Humanity

John Kymissis believes we live not for ourselves, but for others.

“I feel that our purpose here on earth is to help our fellow man, and to do that unconditionally,” says the 20-year-old senior of New Hyde Park, N.Y., who gave up his spring break last March to participate in Habitat for Humanity, spending the week building low-cost housing in Salisbury, Maryland. He so cared about helping others he’s headed back, having organized MIT’s 10-member group this year bound for Philadelphia.

“Some people have more than others, and I feel it’s the responsibility of those who have more to help everyone else in whatever way they can,” says Kymissis, adding it is through service to others that he most could make a difference.

“Before,” he says, “the family lived in a trailer in a dangerous neighborhood, and after, they had a home and a lawn, and the kids had a room, a place to study, a place to play and other kids to play with. It’s a big change.”

Kymissis long has been a cheerful giver. For four years at MIT, where he studies electrical engineering, he has taught science in Cambridge Public Schools. He has raised money for autistic children and tutored gifted schoolchildren. He volunteered in a hospital nursery and delivered flowers to patients. “These people are upset and it’s a chance to help them out,” says Kymissis, who makes it a point every eight weeks to donate blood at Boston’s Children’s Hospital. “It’s something I don’t need for myself that someone else really needs. It’s a way to give of myself, a chance, you know, to say, ‘I’ll give the blood. You concentrate on getting well.’”

Only so far alone

Kymissis was drawn to Habitat for Humanity, he says, because it was a chance to change lives. “What attracted me was being part of a big project that you can’t do alone. With a big group there is increased energy, a feeling of aliveness, and the impact you can make together is more powerful. With 10 people you can do 20 or 30 times the work that one person can do. A house has a big impact on a family.”

Kymissis once had crafted a gavel in a woodworking class, but knew nothing of building a house. When the 10 MIT students arrived by van in Maryland, a Habitat foreman met them at the site and instructed them what to do. Seven houses were to be built from scratch and an old house was to be renovated.

The students spent the next days in the sun constructing one box-style, four-room house with a big attic for a family of four. Together they drove nails, hauled sheetrock, plastered walls, laid the floor, and shingled the roof.

Throughout the week, dozens of local volunteers streamed in with bags of Whoppers and fried chicken donated by local businesses. Restaurants in the area swung open their doors to welcome the workers, who slept in sleeping bags on the floor of a nearby church.

“When you’re doing something together, there’s a lot of laughter,” Kymissis says. “There’s a spirit that comes when people come together in common activity with common focus that releases all this good feeling in you. You really cannot get the same kind of spirit and energy alone.”

Community spirit

Kymissis loved being outside doing physical work. MIT is so cerebral, he says, “it was fun to swing a hammer. At a desk you can work on a problem for hours and get nowhere, but when you’re smacking a wall you make great progress,” he says, adding he loved the tangible results. But what he loved more than building the house, he says, was building community.

“What really brings people together is common purpose,” he says. “And when you have a goal that’s difficult to achieve, that takes a lot of work and takes a lot of work together, it really binds people together.

“I made nine new friends. After work, we’d cook and eat together, joke, and tell stories. Now every time, every time, I run into one of these people at MIT, we feel so close. Working together at a common goal is just one of the fundamental bonding experiences people can have.”

Kymissis cares a lot about joining with others. Co-social chairman of his dormitory, he often plans sushi dinners, pot luck suppers and New Hampshire camping trips. “Community is a sense of togetherness and family, and it only happens when people work together, not apart. It’s so much better when you have a common purpose than if you’re working together but everyone has his own agenda. It’s a lot more unifying.

“Like, see,” he says, “it’s really boring to bake a cake for yourself. It takes a lot of time, and you put a lot of energy into it and you can’t eat that much cake anyway. But when you do it with other people, or for other people, like when you bake the cake for someone’s birthday, you’re doing it for more people than just yourself, and there’s something built inside us that just loves working with and for other people. Love has to be shared.”

by Liz Karagianis

On Topic: public service, students