Time to Refresh!

This post is as much for Michelle and I (Seth) as it is for everyone out there. We started We’ve Got Time to Help over a year ago as a way to get the unemployed masses together and start addressing immediate community service needs. It quickly grew into something we never could have imagined.

We went from hoping to complete a few projects in a year, to being overwhelmed with the amount of people in need for help that exists in our city. Because of the hard economic times this country is experiencing, normal channels for assistance (i.e. agencies that help with food, clothing, rent, volunteers) have been inundated with people calling for help. The agencies resource pools have been stretched too thin and, sometimes, emptied altogether.

We still continue to get calls for help weekly and we continue to help those that we can. We have a great group of volunteers (though, we always welcome more) and they travel throughout the city helping those that have contacted us for help. We have been fortunate enough to help 100’s of people over the last 16 months and we look forward to helping more this year.

The recurring theme in the messages we receive from people that need help is that of hope. Hope. People call us for hope more than they call us for labor, food, or clothing. People call us because they are at, or near, their wit’s end and they don’t know what to do. They have tried going through various channels for help, only to be told that there is not enough to go around. We want to put an end to “not enough”. We believe we can.

Hope is an amazing thing. People call us with tales of hunger, home loss, job loss, personal loss, and myriad difficulties. But, most still have hope. Hope that things will change. Hope that times will get better. Hope that their situation will get better. Hope that someone still cares. And if someone calls us that seems to have lost their hope, we do our best to give them a little. We tell them that we will do everything in our power to help them. We will not walk away from them. We will stand by them in their darkest hour. If people feel that there is even the slightest glimmer of hope, a little sliver far off in the distance, they can keep going. It’s the ones that have lost all hope, that don’t seem to have the energy to keep pushing on.

So, my friends, let’s get reenergized! Let’s set out, every day, to help someone in need. Friends, neighbors, strangers. It doesn’t matter how small or grand the gesture. It matters not what the circumstances are. It doesn’t matter to whom you lend a hand. What matters is that you are keeping hope alive. You are saying “I will not let anyone around me lose hope”. I will fight the good fight. I will be strong when others cannot be. I will pay it forward. I will stand for all that is good and right and say “not on my watch”.

Join us?

Take care and good luck,
Seth and Michelle