Charity Sunday: Streams of Hope

Streams of Hope

Grand Rapids, MI

Welcome! Today I want to tell you about another local organization called Streams of Hope.

Last month, I joined a few other local authors to sell and sign our books at a craft show in Cutlerville, a suburb on the south end of Grand Rapids, MI. In the booth next to us were a pair of lovely ladies who had a wide variety of items. We learned that they were from a local charity called that fed and cared for local residents in a variety of ways – through classes, medical care, after school tutoring, and so much more.

I took home a few items from their booth, along with information about their organization. I'm truly impressed by the scope of their influence on the community, and I promised them I'd feature them in this blog hop. Here's a short video to explain some of the things they do:

For each comment left below within the next week, I'll personally donate $5 toward Streams of Hope.

Check out the other charities featured on this month's hop:

Charity Sunday: Hand2Hand

This month I’m focusing on yet another local charity, one that directly helps the children in my community as well as several others nearby. Hand 2 Hand is an organization that collects and distributes food to hungry children. This group is headquartered in the church I attend in Hudsonville, MI, and I often see volunteers working as my quilt group meets on Tuesday mornings.

Hand2Hand was the brainchild of Cheri Honderd. While working with a literacy program in her local school, she saw that while children in low income families get the benefit of free lunches while at school, they go hungry on weekends. She decided to work with the school and the church to establish a program to provide a backpack full of food for these children to take home each Friday. Soon, other churches joined in to sponsor students in their local schools, and now 111 churches help to feed over 6,000 children in 192 different schools in West Michigan. Food is collected through donations from individuals as well as businesses.

Here’s a video about what Hand2Hand does.

You can read more about this awesome organization by going to their website at https://h2hkids.org/. There is a place to donate through the website, or you can simply leave a comment below. I will personally donate $5 to Hand2Hand for each comment left on this post!

Be sure to visit the other blogs on this hop to support their chosen chairities:

Charity Sunday: The Mel Trotter Mission

Welcome to the second Charity Sunday! If you were here earlier today, I apologize that my post wasn't complete. Sometimes life gets in the way.

Today I want to tell you about another charity located in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The Mel Trotter Mission offers a shelter for the homeless in the city. You can read about them on their website, but I can share with you that whenever there is a problem in the city, the Mel Trotter Mission is there to help.

A man named Mel Trotter started the Grand Rapids City Rescue Mission in 1900. Eventually the mission was named after him. 

The mission operates on donations, as well as sales from their thrift stores, located in several places around the city. The Warming Ears Ministry that I shared with you last month visited the mission and the store headquarters last year. Since it was fall and a harsh winter was predicted, we brought several hundred hats with us. Here are some pictures from that visit.

We arrived with our fleece hats..

Donations are organized, ready to be sent to the shelter or to the thrift stores..

One of the few paid workers at the mission showed us how the mission donations are handled.

Do you have an organization near you that helps to provide the homeless with basic needs? 

I will personally donate $5 to the Mel Trotter Mission for each comment on this post until midnight, September 23, 2019. Please comment below, and tell your friends!

Please visit the other Charity Sunday blogs:

Charity Sunday: The Warming Ears Ministry

Welcome to my corner of the internet! I haven’t blogged here in a long time, but when Lisabet Sarai invited me to join her on her Charity Sunday blog hop, I couldn’t resist! There are so many organizations deserving of our time and funds, but I’m going to start with local groups. If you know of a West Michigan organization you’d like me to feature on a future Charity Sunday, please reach out to me at patriciakiyonoauthor@gmail.com and we’ll talk! For each comment on the blog feature, I’ll donate money to the group or company. 

For this first Charity Sunday hop, I’m sharing a bit about a small group of women I’ve had the pleasure of working with for about ten years. Twice a month, we get together at Diane Solomon’s home in Grandville, MI to sew hats out of polar fleece. These hats are given to various other charities, homeless shelters, and schools. One thousand hats are sent annually to a mission in Juarez, Mexico. 

Each of the ladies present has a jobs in the process – some sew, and some cut fringe and tie the tassles. Diane does all the cutting – by hand! It’s amazing her hands haven’t suffered from all that repetitive motion! My job is to sew the hems on the bottoms of the hats after they’ve been assembled. 

When I have the bottom hem done, other ladies cut the top of the hat into strips and tie the strips together to make a tassle. We go through a massive amount of fabric each time, but it’s a lot of fun. We like to compare the various colors and textures of fleece, speculate on the people that will wear them, and laugh with each other when we make mistakes! But our main job is to make sure that people have something to put on their heads in the cold, snowy winter. 

After the hats are completed, we sort them in piles of ten and then bag them – fifty per bag. On a good morning we can finish two hundred hats! We meet all year long (except the second half of December) because winters are really cold in Michigan, and there are a lot of families who are having a rough time. Each year we send a thousand hats to Juarez, Mexico, to a mission that distributes them along with a nice Christmas dinner. We also donate to various local missions – The Santa Claus Girls collects gifts to distribute each holiday, and In the Image provides basic needs for people all year long. Diane also scours the newspaper for notices from teachers and social workers asking for hats for the children in their care. 

Diane keeps great records, and at the end of each year she lets us know how we’ve done. Her report last December said that 3450 hats had been donated in 2018. Since the group began, 52,710 hats had been made and donated. That’s a lot of warm ears! 

I hope you enjoyed this view of the Warm Ears Ministry. If you’d like to leave a comment of encouragement, please do so! For each comment, I will donate $5 toward materials.

Check out these other blogs on the hop: