Let's Do Something Together

Anton with the amazing volunteers from Columbia Bank during a kit assembly party for the Kitsap County United Way’s Day of Caring

Everybody who likes NWH’s Facebook page, subscribes to the newsletter, volunteers, or donates is driven by the mission of serving our neighbors. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that most of us not only share this desire but also some form of fear, discomfort, and/or insecurity that tempers that desire into something less productive than we’d like.

We have an incredible, growing community and my goal with this new category of posts is to encourage an incremental increase in the types and frequency of outreach. I’d like to harness the power of our numbers by posting an “assignment” once per month. I invite everybody who reads this to share it around, try to complete the assignment, and, if called to do so, write about your experience in the comments section.

Many of the people I know and work with are already very active and influential servants of our homeless neighbors and I hope to hear their experiences, but I definitely want to hear about all the other experiences too: the look you shared while handing out a kit, the feelings you experienced picking up garbage around the tent a fellow human calls home, a conversation you had while sharing lunch with someone. We can all learn, grow, and be inspired to create more opportunities for each other if we share our thoughts and experiences.

The more responses we get the more people will be encouraged to participate. If you’d like to share your experience but keep it private, you can email me directly at anton@nwhospitality.org and I’d be happy to chat.

Assignment:

As this is a bit experimental, I’d like to start off with what I hope is a fairly easy assignment: Spark up a conversation with a friend or family member about homelessness in the area around where you live. Talk about anything: what's being done about it, how many people are affected, what's not being done about it, general attitudes toward people, how all these things effect cultural bias and local policy making, and, most importantly, how it makes you feel and what you might be able to do about it (or are doing about it) systemically or on a one-on-one basis.

If you can, please share in the comments a summary of your discussion.