Keller Williams ‘Red Day’ Targets Kids

 It’s “Red Day” for Keller Williams Realty, a time to shut the doors, take off, take a look around and help address a need in the community.

For Lisa Spencer, a broker and team leader for Keller Williams Realty in Brandon and Plant City, today, May 10, marks the day she and her teammates and colleagues nationwide hearken to the call of Mo Anderson, the CEO of the company.

“Her birthday is in May and she has asked that no one give her gifts,” Spencer said. “And so Red Day started for her, she is the inspiration behind that. The idea started four years ago, that we would take one day a year and dedicate that day to give where we live.”

For Keller Williams, in the Greater Brandon area, that means a trip May 10 to A Kid’s Place in Brandon.

"We've been collecting new pajamas, new socks and underwear, and suitcases for the kids,” Spencer said.

These gifts go along with a power-wash cleanup and overall sprucing up of A Kid’s Place two days earlier that Keller Williams volunteers helped perform.

“We were going to title our Red Day, ‘Cleaning Up Child Abuse,’ but they had a state inspection [May 9], which was the day before Red Day," Spencer said. "So we went there May 8 to help them clean."

A Kid’s Place serves as a safe, stable and nurturing environment for abused, abandoned and neglected children who have been removed from their homes by the courts. Children staying at A Kid’s Place reside in a home-like setting with live-in house parents, and siblings are housed in the same home to provide consistency for the family unit. The average age of children served by A Kid’s Place is 5; the average length of stay is 65 days.

"It's very important to us that people are aware of this facility," Spencer said. "If you can start with children, and improve their lives, you end up helping everybody."

Two years ago, the local Keller Williams Realty helped an elderly couple, by giving their home "a facelift," Spencer said. Last year on Red Day the volunteers collected food for the Emergency Care Help Organization (ECHO) in Brandon, and for a food pantry in Plant City.

"Each year we try to pick a different organization," Spencer said. "We are all a part of the community. Sometimes we can get so busy in our day-to-day desire to make a living that we forget to look around us. It's nice to work for a company that really gives everyone permission to sit back, take a day off and give to the community."

As for why the one-day drive, involving some 80,000 realtors and employees nationwide, is named "Red Day," Spencer offers this answer:

"Red is for the heart, and that's the company's color."