A Note from the Executive Director
A Note from the Executive Director
Spring Newsletter 2022
Creating Community
Food doesn’t change us. Education doesn’t really change us either. What truly changes us are the people around us. This may seem like an overstatement but what we see every day at Love in Action and in our community bears this out. We want it to be hard to be hungry in the Tri-Cities. And the difference between thriving and suffering truly can be food. The difference between understanding and confusion can be education. But to see actual, sustained thriving requires more than material provision or information. Each of us needs others.
I’ll never forget my friend, Ken, who attended EmpowerU and found it to be the difference between having enough or monthly running out. When I sat with him to ask what had helped his situation, he had an incredibly simple reply. It was the people around him. He never mentioned the curriculum, although he clearly thought it meaningful. What he said was, somewhere in the conversation with those around him, he found they had answers he needed to understand. And he had answers they needed as well. And in the community he found the power not only to budget differently but to believe he could be the solution to his own problems. In fact, he realized he could even be the solution to the problems of others!
Author Tim Soerens writes, the reason we don’t believe change can happen is not that we don’t want it and usually not because we fear something new, but because we believe that we are alone.
I sometimes think the enemy Love in Action really combats most is aloneness, in the form of barriers and chasms that separate us as people. Quietly, I’ll admit this is true for our clients but it is also true for the hundreds of volunteers and staff that give their time. To grow, to develop, to become the best versions of ourselves, we need each other. Over the past several years, LIA has taken this charge seriously, turning food trucks into friendships, classrooms into real connections and shelters into communities. St. Paul wrote that we could speak in the language of angels, have faith that could move mountains, knowledge that could understand mysteries, but without love, we truly have nothing.
Your generosity provides food, shelter, and healthcare—the things money can buy. But more essentially it empowers people… people who make the difference… people who connect and refuse to allow aloneness to conquer. Your giving makes a difference, and we are thankful!
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