Helping Hearts, Blog of Anne Sanders

We recently moved to a new neighborhood. Our neighbors on one side are selling their house and haven’t talked to us one time. We met the neighbors on the other side within a week of moving, because our son was selling boy scout camp cards with coupons on them to help him raise money for summer camp. They didn’t buy a card, but they did welcome us to the neighborhood.  I’ve already written about how our old neighbors were so supportive of him and the new neighbors here were pretty great, too, buying cards and encouraging him to talk by asking him questions about scouting. Back in our old neighborhood, I had a habit of bringing cookies over to new neighbors, at least in the first few years of living there. Later, we had so many new neighbors that I stopped doing it. I think I also got tired with the apathy in the neighborhood. Our neighborhood had a community issue to deal with that never really got solved. We had a 55 year old sign in the front of the neighborhoo...

I often brainstorm topics to write about for this blog. I keep a list of over 250 ideas to which I am always adding. But sometimes I miss the obvious. Have you heard of Volunteers of America ? Neither had I, until today. It’s a Christian organization that’s been around since 1896. It provides help for homelessness, people with mental health problems, children, communities, veterans, those with disabilities or substance abuse problems and seniors. It also provides emergency services for people in crisis. As its name implies, it provides its ministry just in America. It provides services to more than two million people in over 400 communities in 46 states and the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. You can search for a local office near you at its website . I love its statement of Why We Do What We Do:   We are Volunteers of America. And we are the first to step forward, Taking on the most crushing problems. The dire. The hopeless. The untouchable. And we make a...

It’s a crazy idea, starting a running group for homeless people, but that’s how Back On My Feet (BoMF) began, with one runner thinking that helping nine men add a regular discipline to their lives might help them get them back on track. Back on My Feet “Residential Members” (meaning homeless persons) are getting jobs and housing and improving their outlook on life, too. Seventy-eight percent are sure they’ll get a job they like and 94 percent are hopeful about the future while almost 900 have gotten jobs and over 600 have found a home. It starts with running. Attendance, mileage and attitude are tracked on every run. After 30 days in the program, each Residential Member who maintains 90% attendance at the morning runs moves to Back on My Feet’s “Next Steps” phase. In this phase, BoMF staff work with Residential Members “to build a road map toward self-sufficiency which includes financial literacy and skill-building classes with for-profit and nonprofit partners.” After t...

Next Sunday is Father’s Day and the week leading up to it is Men’s Health Week as part of Men’s Health Month in June. I shared with you last week how my husband reminded me about the spirit of charity when I forgot it. This month, we need to remind the men in our life how important it is to take care of themselves. For years I played in a tennis league and tried to encourage my husband to do something regularly for exercise. But he wouldn’t. It wasn’t until someone he knew who was around his age died of a heart attack that he finally realized how important it was to take care of himself. He began doing martial arts three times a week. Sometimes men need a wake up call like that but they shouldn’t have to wait for someone to die to start taking care of themselves. The Men’s Health Network (MHN) in its Drive for Five , is highlighting information on five important health risks for men--high cholesterol, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, high prostate-specific antigen ...