In my life I have experienced being plain ol' low income, on fixed income, and downright homeless with no income. In each experience there have been cracks we have fallen in looking for help from social service organizations. Maybe there were services we could not avail ourselves of due to lack of mobility. We would get help with food and clothing but finding diapers was impossible. Food banks are great, but the local one doesn't help with toilet paper, dish soap and the like. And even if aall we need is a bit of help with food once a month, are the only hours the foodbank is open is while we are working? While second-hand clothes are not a problem, new socks and underwear give a person a sense of dignity sometimes. Not many places will be able to help with that. Then there are the restrictions social service organizations take upon themselves to get funding from government grants, restrictions that place conditions on how and whom they can help. You can spend forty hours a week jumping through hoops and chasing down services. It WOULD be easier to have a job and we know it. We would probably spend less in gas money, lol.
Maybe you're just having a rough month. Your car broke down and fixing it or getting a new one cuts into your budget. It's a dominoe effect in action and you've got shut off notices.You seek help and after giving your entire life story, violate your privacy and feel completely humiliated and degraded, you have too much income. They won't help. And even if the reason for your situation was a poor decision, who are we to judge? As if anyone can say they haven't ever made a poor decision, trusted the wrong person, etc. Hopefully we learn from it, but maybe we need a little help while we figure it out.
What about pets? Good luck convincing an agency pet food and vet bills are a neccessary expense. for some of us, choosing whether to buy pet food or people food is like asking which of our children do we want to eat and which do wea want to let go without. You won't get dog food at the foodbank. Maybe your horses need hay this winter and you just lost your job. There might be a farmer nearby who can spare some.
Maybe we just need a shower or to do a load of laundry. Most would just shrug and say it is our family's responsibility. Yours may recognize that, but not everyone's does. For those, to get a shower or do a load of laundry means having to emotionally walk through a barage of criticism, emotional and psychological abuse which led them into a life of poor decisions to begin with. They'd rather sleep on the street, wash their clothes in a sink, and go around dirty. Some tough it out because they don't want their children to experience such family interactions as normal, only repeating the cycle. They lose family and friends making that brave decision.
To help someone up out of a ditch, you have to give them more than enough to meet their basic needs: sometimes you have to feed a man while you teach him to fish so he doesn't starve to death while learning. Sometimes a hand up needs to include a handout. Sure, they can pay their rent and eat, but where is the money to save up for a car? There is no public transportation out here. How have you made their life better? And honestly, just shoving someone into a job isn't going to change their mentality. Every resource you invested forcing them to be what they can't is only wasted time and energy. It doesn't last. They didn't use you, they didn't try to take advantage, they simply couldn't continue on a path they were forced to walk just to meet their basic needs and please you.
There is more we can do than be your average charity. We could network to match people in need with services like help with plumbing, picking your extra vegetables to give to someone who would use them, teach a skill to a few local people, form a support group or two. I would love to have it offgrid, making the most of solar and wind power to cut overhead costs, make it more self-sufficient.
It won't be until mid-march I can fill out the paperwork, apply for non-profit status, etc. I already know who to contact to walk me through the starting your own bussiness process for free and there is a place in Unity that gives grants to non-profits that I will look into. In the meantime, I am looking for input, suggestions for services we could offer, volunteers to be a part of it, etc. Fishing to see what kind of support is out there for this as well as to see if the community even wants it. so far, I have gotten good responses and people have said they would help in any way they could, but we all have limited resources. Grandma's house is going to need a house to call home, a vehicle or two, computer for records and networking, etc. I also know someone ran an ad last year in the Rolling Thunder looking for interest in creating a foodbank in Detroit. Anyone know who it was and/or what kind of responses they got. it was before I got this idea so I didn't save the ad.
Anyways, feel free to comment here if you have some helpful input!
Oh, and I aced my accounting and bussiness classes in college, so the bussiness end of doing things is within my range of abilities as well. just never before was inspired enough by a bussiness idea to use them :)
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