A HELPING HAND

Help Them to Hope is embarking on its 2011 Hope campaign.  As we reflect on the fund’s first half century of helping our less-fortunate neighbors in Lake County, we look at the communities and neighbors around us and see unemployment at all-time highs. We look at the many home foreclosures and see within our own communities the effects of strife all around us.

Help Them to Hope was founded by pressmen at The News-Sun newspaper in 1958. In those early days, these men put spare change in a coffee tin to raise money for people around Lake County who needed a helping hand. The spirit of these Hope Fund founders reminds us years later that charity begins at home. We see our elderly struggle to make ends meet; they often must choose between food and their medications.

Year after year, the people of Lake County have not forgotten those among us who are in need.  We continue to offer thanks for the bounty and blessings so many of us enjoy. Every year, we see more homeless families.

The donations you give are not wasted on administrative fees. Help Them To Hope is the only local non-profit that dispenses 100 percent of all funds collected to those most in need. The officers and board members receive nothing and have been loyal partners of the Hope Fund for many years.

When you give a monetary gift, you invest in your neighbor, your community and our future. Your giving has become memorials to those who are no longer with us in whose name donations are made each year.  

When you donate, you reinforce the belief that we all can make a difference. We must not lose sight of the gift of giving hope to the less fortunate.

During the 52-year existence of Help Them to Hope, there has never been any door-to-door solicitation, nor phone calls asking for money; not even a mailing soliciting a single donation. One hundred percent of every dollar collected goes to agencies that continue to provide the most basic needs to the less fortunate.

I urge you to bring some hope into the to lives of our less-fortunate neighbors this holiday season by donating whatever you can to the Help Them to Hope Fund. No donation is too small. All contributions are appreciated.

Help to continue the legacy of the pressmen’s coffee tin. Together, we can make a difference this holiday season.

Richard A. Ribando
President
Help Them to Hope, Inc
Gurnee, IL