Lotsa Helping Hands

Ever feel helpless? When a friend is very sick, you may feel like there’s nothing you can do. It’s not true. You can always pray for someone and prayer can change things. There’s another thing you can do. Get some help for your friend.

Recently, a friend of mine was sick. She was self aware enough to know she’d have trouble cooking so she asked me to have some of our friends make her some meals. I did so gladly.

Thank God it was just a temporary illness and she was back on her feet in a few weeks. Sometimes that’s not the case.

In those cases, there’s a lot to do. Take your friend to the doctor, help with laundry and housecleaning, watch the kids while she rests or is at the doctor, give her primary caregiver a break. The list goes on.

So, how do you coordinate what needs to be done with the people who can do it? You can spend all your time on the phone calling and setting things up. Or, you can use Lotsa Helping Hands.

What is Lotsa Helping Hands? An online service for those who want to help.

It provides a Help Calendar to schedule members for tasks. The Coordinator creates a community and invites members to join. Then she posts tasks and volunteers take them.

When a new need is posted, everyone in your Community will get an email. Reminders are sent, too. There are message boards to keep the communication going. One of those is Well Wishes to help the person going through this know she’s loved.

You can also post photos and add custom sections like a Donate tab or special recipes or a personal blog. To keep up with important dates, you can put occasions on a calendar to remind everyone. You can also put special events in the Help Calendar if they require multiple volunteers or go over many days like a fundraiser or clean-up day.

Lotsa Helping Hands has a specific website for those going through cancer called My Cancer Circle.

So the next time you have a friend going through an ongoing illness, don’t feel helpless. Talk to her and her family and see if they know about Lotsa Helping Hands. They may ask you to set up the community or may do it themselves.

Isn’t it great to have a way to help and to organize others to do so? Thank you Lotsa Helping Hands. God Bless, everyone!