Category: Outreach

One of the things that SHoWLE does, that I would like to see do, is assist the com­mu­ni­ty where we live. One project we com­plet­ed for the sec­ond year was adopt­ing a fam­i­ly through Lucas County Children Services for Christmas. Of course the ques­tion that get asks is why only at Christmas when fam­i­lies need help all year round? Why copy what oth­er faith groups do? Those are valid ques­tions and I’ll explain our phi­los­o­phy about com­mu­ni­ty projects.

I am total­ly with those who com­plain about copy­ing reli­gious groups and pulling out the volunteering/donation machine only dur­ing the hol­i­day sea­son. I think only lim­it­ing such action to the hol­i­days plays into the reli­gious nar­ra­tive that help is only need­ed dur­ing one time of the year so we feel bet­ter about not help­ing at oth­er times.

The oth­er con­sid­er­a­tion for year end donat­ing is tax­es. People who are able to deduct dona­tions may want to wait until the end of the year to get their full return on the tax forms the next year.

Some non-profits also use the hol­i­day sea­son to raise aware­ness and dona­tions about their cause dur­ing a time of the year when peo­ple are think­ing about donat­ing time, mon­ey, or things to those who are strug­gling.

The only obsta­cle to SHoWLE help­ing a fam­i­ly all year is we would need to have a group of mem­bers com­mit­ted to help­ing all year. It would not be some­thing to be thrown togeth­er at the last minute IF we have time. There will be times such an endeav­or will be a grind and some­one might not be “feel­ing it” that par­tic­u­lar time or date. I know from past expe­ri­ence with the group I was part of in Columbus that even if you have five or six peo­ple say­ing they will help even­tu­al­ly it is left to one of two peo­ple to do all the work.

I won’t com­mit SHoWLE to a year long effort with­out know­ing we have a sol­id com­mit­ment from vol­un­teers to pull it off. I don’t want to see us com­mit to some­thing and either fail to do it or do it half way. That would make us look bad in the com­mu­ni­ty and might hurt future chances to work with oth­er groups on oth­er projects.

I just don’t think SHoWLE is big enough to sus­tain a year long effort to help a fam­i­ly at this time but we do have the capac­i­ty to par­tic­i­pate in the lim­it­ed hol­i­day pro­gram through Lucas County although I did reduce the size of the fam­i­ly we helped from 3 peo­ple to two, this year, just so as not to stretch us too far.

SHoWLE will also try to help oth­ers if an emer­gency comes up. Last Christmas we were able to help a fam­i­ly that had been sud­den­ly dropped by a com­pa­ny that had “adopt­ed” them as part of their year end “giv­ing back” to the com­mu­ni­ty that many com­pa­nies do on the hol­i­days. We were able to pull togeth­er some extra resources so that fam­i­ly did­n’t miss out because a com­pa­ny heart­less­ly changed it’s mind.

I am always open to new ideas. If some­one is enthu­si­as­tic about some project and they pret­ty much do the leg work to get it set­up and coor­di­nate it then I am will­ing to try it and pro­mote it to the rest of the group.