Creating a Caring Community

Greetings, 

There are a few quick IM notes I'd like to share with you:

· We have opened registration for this year's Amazing Faiths Dinner Dialogues, which are scheduled for Thursday, November 17th. This year we are planning two tracks; one for first-timers, and one for folks who have participated previously and want a different experience. We expect hundreds of folks to come together for meaningful talk and friendship. You really do help us when you register early - so please do! Click here to visit the registration page.

· We are very close to 4,700 seniors receiving Meals on Wheels. We will likely be adding another 75 or so this month - which means that they will cost IM about $100,000 over their first year. We are getting awfully close to our maximum capacity - unless lots of folks step up and sponsor seniors. Our Manna Group does just that - they sponsor one or more seniors at $1,200 a year. Manna Group members come in all types - corporations like Shell Oil Company and Motiva Enterprises, LLC. (our lead corporate sponsor); lots of congregations and organizations; and over a hundred individuals just like you and me. We anticipate adding 300 to 400 more clients this fiscal year - so we really need that number sponsored for us to keep going. Does this sound like something you'd like to consider? If so, click here to learn more.

· A special thank you to Scout's Honor Rescue, a non profit animal rescue organization, who collected more than 4,000 pounds of dog and cat food for our aniMeals on Wheels program this weekend. This food will go to seniors with pets so that they do not have to share their limited food and resources with their four legged friends! If you'd like to help this program, click here.

A THOUGHT TO PONDER

Each year at this time I write a note about the United Way campaign and why I believe it is such a critically important asset in our community. So aside from the fact that IM is a major recipient of United Way funds, I am passionate about community campaigns.

Here's my top three reasons why I hope you will contribute to the United Way, either through your company campaign or individually:

· We are blessed to live in a very charitable community. If you think about that, would you want to live in any other sort of place? Would you want to live in a community where people don't care about one another? The United Way is Houston's primary resource for showing how much we care about one another. That's important enough for me to give my money.

· The United Way touches the lives of more than one out of every two Houstonians through the organizations and programs it funds. I'll bet you know someone who has been touched by a United Way service. Do you know of any other organization, other than government, that has that reach?

· In difficult times the needs grow more urgent. The work that the United Way supports is being hit hard by the double effects of reduced government funding and a difficult economy. So this year, and likely more to come, the United Way will be looked to as the best resource to help fill the many gaps that are widening. It's a hard job, made necessary by the needs that are growing.

In these fragmented times, we need great examples of unity. United Way is one great way to show that not only do YOU care, but that WE all do. It's just that plain simple. It's time to help those in need and United Way is Houston's best way to act together.

Talk to you in two weeks.


Elliot Gershenson
President and CEO
Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston

Goodbye LT You Lived Well - Tuesday Memo

Greetings.

I am saddened to tell you that LT, a senior in IM's Meals on Wheels program who is featured in our promotional video, passed away at the end of last year. While this is a sad event for his family and all of us here at IM, LT got his wish. In the video, LT talked about how he built his house for his wife and after she passed, IM's Meals on Wheels for Greater Houston helped him stay in his home. He said that he had no problem "going to heaven or where ever" when he died, but as long as he lived, he felt that he should live in his own home. Well that's exactly what he was able to do.

Watch the IM video and listen to LT tell his story.

Friends, no one tells the story better than LT. For five years IM gave him a meal each day and the opportunity to live out his life exactly where he wanted to. He was a tough old coot who got his last wish. What more can be said?

I wish I could take LT to hearings on the Texas State budget. I think he would say something like: "There are a lot of folks like me who worked hard all their lives and now are stuck in their homes unable to take care of our basic needs. I paid taxes on every penny I earned, and paid my social security and medicare taxes too. All I wanted was to be able to stay in my own home. Yep, that means that other Texans should help me, just like I helped them all those years when I worked hard."

If you listen to our politicians they are afraid to say the word "tax." To our current representatives taxing folks is the same as robbing them. Well I don't agree. Now don't get me wrong, I like to take home as much money as everyone else - but I do believe that there are some things that governments must do: fix our roads; keep us safe; make sure that there are great schools; provide the basic safety net infrastructure so that folks who are poor get fed and life-saving medical care. And the list goes on.

That's the problem. There are just too many needs and too few dollars. But what is absolutely clear is that if we try to balance the budget with cuts alone, there will be pain that will scar our state for years. We will become uncompetitive if we don't have an educated workforce. And we will be uncompetitive if we are not a compassionate state. There is no way, in my mind, to meet the needs of our state without some balance between revenue growth and responsible cutbacks.

LT got his wish because the federal government and the State of Texas shared the burden of providing for him with you, the supporters of IM. Government funding makes up about 60% of the cost of Meals on Wheels; and the rest comes from donations from United Way, congregations, corporations and foundations, and folks just like you and me.

There's no easy answer. But if we just keep cutting, at some point we will get to the bone and by that time there will be no way to be anything other than crippled. That's not what I wish for the state that I call my home.

Talk to you in two weeks.

Elliot Gershenson
President and CEO Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston