35 Ways to Help

I was browsing all my regular Monday morning websites this morning (Huffington Post, The Day, New York Times, Twitter, and The Patch) for any information worth sharing with you all, and through a blog post written by Toan Lam, the founder of Go Inspire Go, I came across this JustGive Guide that tells you 35 ways you can help the homeless. (read it here). Some things are more obvious than others, such as give money and clothing or volunteer at a soup kitchen, but some are topics that can often go overlooked.

For example, responding with kindness. When you see someone who you know is homeless on the street, don't ignore them, even if you just say hi it's important to treat everyone as an individual. None of us would want to be defined by something that makes society seclude us, so give it a go and make an effort to recognize each person for who they are, not where they live.

Along with being aware and educating yourself, exercise your abilities and share your knowledge with others. If you're really good with kids, teach a classroom or an after school club about homelessness. If you are into politics, attend a town meeting or try to talk to your mayor or town manager to help them understand the issue of homelessness in your community.

If you are an employer, consider hiring someone living in a local shelter or a homeless veteran. We make resumes every day for our guests, and I must say that I find most of them extremely impressive. Our guests have a ton of work experience and ambition, it is just a difficult time to find places that are hiring.

Apparently, there's this newspaper called "Street News" that I'd never heard of before that you can purchase in almost any major American city that puts 5 cents into an account for housing deposits and rent for our homeless neighbors. How cool is that?? Here is the link to the website (click me) , I haven't really looked over it but I like the idea, maybe you can check it out.

Time for me to plug our organization into your mind. Christmas is a week away, Hanukkah is even closer, and shopping time is almost up. Do you still have people on your list that you just have no idea how to shop for? Or maybe you'd rather give a group gift instead of individual gifts to your knitting club? (or book club, or cousins, or college friends...) A donation to HHC is a gift that you can put in someones name or honor, and we can send you a beautiful gift card to let them know about the gift. You can be assured that this gift will never get stashed back into the closet or thrown into the same gift swap next year, but it will be re gifted (because you send it to us, and we'll be sure it goes to someones housing deposit, clothing, food, or transportation.)

Although I'll be bringing you holiday wishes probably every day this week, HAPPY HOLIDAYS!! Treat Monday like it's Christmas...or like its 6 days before Christmas...

-Jackie