How a Phone Call With His Dad Turned Into 65,000 Volunteers and 12,000 Rebuilt Homes

The plan was modest by any measure: eight people, eight days, one family. Steve Tybor, then working a corporate leadership role in Tupelo, Mississippi, got a phone call from his 68-year-old father after Hurricane Katrina tore through the Gulf Coast in 2005. The two talked about going down together, finding a widow or an elderly couple, and helping rebuild a single home. That was it.

They ended up taking 684 people. In eight days, they rebuilt 84 homes.

Twenty years on, Eight Days of Hope has grown into one of the country's most active disaster relief organizations, with 65,000 volunteers deployed across the United States and more than 12,000 families helped — from hurricane damage in Mississippi to wildfires in Hawaii to snowstorms in Buffalo, New York. Tiber walked away from his corporate career to run the ministry full time, something he says he never would have predicted standing in Bay Saint Louis in 2005.

The organization now operates across four areas of work. Rapid-response teams deploy immediately after disasters. A mass feeding operation can produce thousands of meals and works through local churches when power is out. And since 2018, Eight Days of Hope has been building safe houses for women and children rescued from human trafficking — 22 facilities completed so far.

The trafficking initiative grew out of a stark reality: there are roughly 13,000 animal shelters in the United States, but only around 800 rooms available nationwide for trafficking survivors who need even temporary housing. Tybor's goal is to keep building those facilities, at no cost to the communities receiving them, until the need no longer exists. "We're probably only in the second or third mile," he said, "but we're going to continue to build facilities until they're not needed."

Corporate partners, including Kehe Cares, have helped sustain the volunteer pipeline by sending employees to serve alongside Eight Days of Hope teams. Volunteers receive food and lodging at no charge, and the organization welcomes families. The model has kept the work going through two decades of storms, fires, and floods.

For Tybor, the scale of what has unfolded is still difficult to fully absorb. "I'm still stunned when I get on a plane and I go places and I see volunteers serving with us," he said. "It's humbling."