By: Ashley Hillman
Community Collaborations Director
I’ve realized that I can learn a lot working at United Way. Yes, learning how to convert an excel document to a pdf and how to create a comprehensive, yet simple budget are all great skills, but it’s the lessons about generosity and kindness that I value most of all. It’s easy to become immersed with responding to emails, returning phone calls, coordinating meetings and a number of other daily tasks that fill each moment of the working day. But it’s the people, groups and organizations whose actions make me realize that life is about a lot more than checking off the tasks on my “to do” list.
Shannon Harmon, one of my colleagues in Resource Development, and I recently took on a project to identify families in need to receive gifts this Christmas. We coordinated with a teacher at Horizonte Welcome Center to identify just a few families who could use some assistance this holiday season, and the response we received was a much-needed jolt of reality for me. Descriptions of families who are new to not only our Salt Lake community, but to our country, and in need of basic necessities like clothing, shoes, sheets and hygiene products filled the page on the email. Words such as “unemployed” and “homeless” made me reflect on the need, instead of merely the task of coordinating groups or individuals who might be able to sponsor one of the “numbers” on the list. The descriptions in the email transformed those numbers into faces, families and people struggling to make ends meet in a foreign place. Most of the refugees on the list in the email have large families and few resources. And perhaps most unsettling was that the list could have been much, much longer.
When our initial plan of action for finding sponsorships for these families fell through, Shannon and I were left with this list of families in need and zero sponsorships. We weren’t quite sure how we were going to find businesses or individuals to sponsor all of the families. We just knew that each and every family on that list absolutely had to be sponsored. Shannon made some phone calls and little by little, businesses and family members of coworkers stepped up to the plate and not only sponsored each and every family on the list, but asked for additional ways they could help! Informal groups of friends and family joined forces to pool money and shop for these families so that every single need on the list was met. A grandmother requested information about a family so that she could take her grandchildren shopping for them—teaching generosity and kindness by example.
What began as another bullet on my “to do” list became a lesson in compassion. Yes, a few families at Horizonte Welcome Center received gifts of items both wanted and needed, but in the process, I learned that the human spirit is still alive and moving through our communities. Sometimes it takes a simple act of kindness to open our eyes to the good that surrounds us. This realization was a feeling far more satisfying than marking yet another task off of my “to do” list. And for that, I am very thankful.
