By Dale Wilson
Executive Director, Olympic Community Action Programs
As executive director of Olympic Community Action Programs, I am honored and privileged to participate in a myriad of community dialogues and activities.
It is however, the opportunity to speak to you, the readers of the Peninsula Daily News, about the Home Fund that is always high on my list of favorite tasks.
It is here that I am able to share with you the importance of the fund.
Why is the Peninsula Home Fund so crucial?
As the social safety net becomes increasingly tattered, torn and stressed, people are increasingly at risk of falling through the growing gaps.
It is most often when people are in free fall that the Hone Fund delivers resources when others have failed.
Each year thousands of people living across the Olympic Peninsula receive help from the Peninsula Home Fund.
Every recipient shares in common the disadvantages of poverty.
Some are in search of long-term solutions, while others are seeking that bit of help to get them through an immediate crisis.
Each is experiencing an acute personal need.
Every contribution to the Hone Fund is far more than a donation.
It is recognition that not all humanitarian responses must come from somewhere, or someone, else.
The fund is a statement that both individually, and as a collective, people across the Olympic Peninsula are prepared to respond to the needs of others.
The Hone Fund is the renewed sight a pair of glasses brings.
It is a smile created by a dental repair.
The fund is getting people to work on time with a bus pass, or helping with the rent.
The fund is someone getting well because a prescription was filled, or it is diapers for a new baby.
The Home Fund is food on a table that would otherwise be bare.
The fund is all this and much more.
Thanks to the PDN and each of you, the Peninsula Home Fund is frequently the just right response to problems that otherwise confound opportunity and hope.
Thank you for giving.
Thank you for caring.
