The Brazos Valley Gives event sheds light on nonprofit with mission to build ramps for Texas’ homebound.
Brazos Valley Gives is an 18-hour online-giving campaign that will take place on Tuesday, Oct. 21. The event will give the Brazos Valley community the opportunity to unite by raising money for local nonprofit organizations. Early giving is currently live and will remain open until Monday, Oct. 20.
One of the nonprofit organizations featured in the event is the Texas Ramp Project, a statewide nonprofit organization that improves the accessibility of lower-income homes with free wheelchair ramps. According to its website, the vision is that, “No Texas resident shall lack safe access because of financial limitations.”
Photo courtesy of RAMPS Internal Relations Officer and landscape architecture junior Reagan Sewell. Student helps build a ramp on Sunday, Oct. 5, 2025.The Brazos Valley branch of the Texas Ramp Project is mostly made up of retirees. These volunteers work with the student participants of Representing A&M by Performing Service, or RAMPS, to build wheelchair ramps in the seven-county region.
“The need is great,” Texas Ramp Project Board Director Roy Harrington said. “We have people that have been trapped either in or out of their home for months. Many of them can’t even go out and sit on the porch because there’d be a seven-inch drop. They’re just stuck.”
Harrington is a retired industrial engineer who serves the organization as both a board director and the area/regional Coordinator. As a dedicated volunteer, he has contributed to many success stories.
“We built a ramp for a lady and not too long after, [I heard] the news talking about a fire,” Harrington said. “They named the street where the ramp was, and it turned out to be her house that burned. The ramp that we built was used to get her out of the house.”
The Texas Ramp Project averages two and a half accessibility ramps per week in the Brazos Valley, with its longest being a 94-foot-long ramp. Clients are selected from the qualified referrals of healthcare providers, social workers or community organizations.
Each semester, the project assigns six of these clients to the campus RAMPS program. The building days usually fall on a Saturday or Sunday and last three to four hours. Landscape architecture junior and RAMPS Internal Relations Officer Reagan Sewell is in charge of ensuring the student volunteers work cohesively while building.
“We need to be able to trust each other and get closer because during builds, we interact with dangerous tools,” Sewell said. “It’s really important to build those bonds outside of the builds, and that’s my purpose. It seems simple, but I make people like people.”
Sewell is one of four RAMPS student leaders, along with financial management graduate student and President Daniel Bunting, nutrition senior and Finance Officer Robert Wagner and business honors junior and Construction Officer Layton Schawe. Together, they guide an average of 15 team members through each build.
The team said they take pride in leaving the building site better than they found it, even if that includes making repairs beyond their original task. During a recent build on Oct. 5, they fixed the stability of a nearby playground set and salvaged old stairs in addition to completing the ramp.
“Our purpose is to not run as a normal organization, but to help in any ways possible,” Sewell said. “That’s our whole goal. We don’t have socials, we don’t have point requirements, we don’t have really high dues. We are just here to help.”
Along with ongoing projects, RAMPS volunteers check the status of past builds to ensure that their work has lasted throughout the years. Bunting said that seeing the immediate impact of the team’s work is very rewarding.
“A lot of times, the family will come out and you can see the smiles as they use the ramp for the first time,” Bunting said. “It’s so cool, and it touches my heart a little bit. It’s amazing how a couple of hours out of our day can change someone’s life.”
Joile Jackson, News Writer, The Battalion, October 08, 2025.