Over the two past years, I have spent time researching several medical conditions, and identifying agencies that can aid a young child with a disabling condition. At the same time, my desire to aid others in my immediate community and those in foreign lands that are less fortunate than my family has grown, yet my personal circumstances (as indicated above) prevent me from dedicating much time in aiding others nor does it allow for large contributions to any particular cause.
The desire to increase aid evolved from several sources. First, we started attending a church with very active community members two years ago. During this time, I attended a program called Just Neighbors, which personalized the challenges of poverty and gave participants not only a chance to discuss issues, but also allowed us to experience balancing a budget when income never covers basic necessities, losing our job when we were not trained to do any other type of work and had no family support system, and experience the prejudice that comes with not being able to support your family. I wanted to get more involved, but my immediate family needed to take precedence, which means that my free time for volunteering comes only after my young child goes to bed at night and my financial responsibility to support my family takes precedence over donations. This does not make a good combination when it comes to charity work. However, a blog posting on hospitality toward others really hit home to me and made me realize that I could possibly make an impact by blogging myself about charitable organizations and ideas for serving others.
My goal is to start by identifying organizations or programs that allow us to be hospitable to those perceived to be 'less fortuate' financially, healthwise, mentally, or spiritually. I am not an expert in any of these areas, but I am a trained librarian (and thus have research skills) and have paired with a professional writer to aid in the crafting of interviews and documentation process. Together we aim to provide informative and throught provoking posts that we hope will lead to many people demonstrating hospitality toward others.
