Season of Hope Invitation

Will you join us for a Season of Hope? Between now and the end of the year, we will be sharing weekly content that explores the many facets of hope.

This isn’t meant to be prescriptive. There are multiple entry points into this invitation: Moments of inspiration and response on social media. Minutes or more, with a weekly blog post, where you sit quietly and ponder one of the prompts. A month of hope in action. Make this season of hope the reflection that you need.

You can find Season of Hope Week 1 here and Week 2 here.

 

Week 3, Season of Hope: Warm Welcome Fund

Have you ever shown up somewhere new, like the first day at a new job or school?  You’re wondering where to go, who to talk to, where you fit in, how to even get started. It’s intimidating.

Now imagine that you’re also experiencing homelessness. You’ve heard about this place called Roof Above. It can be a little hard to find. Maybe you had to take two buses or walk a long way carrying everything you own. You are likely exhausted, and this time of year, you are probably cold. Even once you arrive, everything is unfamiliar, and it may be hard to ask for help.

When neighbors arrive at Roof Above’s Day Services Center, they have already had a long, hard journey to reach us. We want to offer the warmest welcome possible; to make it easier to get the help they need. We want to be a place where hope is reinvented, and that starts with the very first greeting.

“Hope is invented every day.”

~James Baldwin

James Baldwin shared this quote in an “Ebony” interview after finding his way out of one of the darkest periods in his life, after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Baldwin learned firsthand that hope can die and be reborn, but that it requires belief, persistence, and action.

At Roof Above we see that belief and persistence every day in the neighbors we welcome to the Day Services Center, individuals who believe that there is a path out of homelessness. Maybe that day what we can offer is a place to make a phone call, receive mail, and take a shower. A shelter bed instead of sleeping outside. Maybe it’s the day someone applies for housing.

We see them showing up every day, inventing hope, taking small but profound actions, building toward the joyful day that they move into the place they can call home.

Questions to Ponder

• Can you recognize ways that hope is invented in your life every day?
• Have you had the experience of a warm welcome in a new environment? Or maybe the opposite? If so, how has that experience informed how you show up for others?

Invitation to Act in Hope

You can help make someone’s day a little brighter.

That welcome is the very first step.

Will you help us by investing in our Warm Welcome Fund?

This fund will support dedicated staff positions at our Day Services Center who will welcome neighbors, address questions, and help connect them with services. $150,000 would fully fund these positions every day for a year.

Your gift will ensure that neighbors arriving at our Day Services Center are greeted by staff who will let them know that they have come to the right place to get help.

Click here to give to the Warm Welcome Fund.

 

 

 

If you’d like to spend time with previous Season of Hope posts, you can find Week 1 here and Week 2 here.