Impacting Lives
July 21st, 2010
I often tell our staff what tremendous opportunities we have to impact people’s lives. We have the opportunity at Howe-Peterson to serve families in their greatest need, to care for them and their most prized possession, their loved one. We have the opportunity through our community work to reach out and touch people’s lives also, or even sometimes our own lives are impacted. I am a member of the Exchange Club of Dearborn and my life was impacted today.
I am working on a project through the Exchange with Child’s Hope, the Child Abuse Prevention Council of Wayne County. They offer programs for Mandated Reporting Training for professionals in our community, Never Shake a Baby to teach parents about Shaken Baby Syndrome, Don’t Stress Take 5 a workshop to teach parents how to manage stressful situations and disciplining children, My Body is Mine for preschoolers to learn about inappropriate touching and IMPACT a preschool literacy program. I also came into contact with Sharon Ottenbreit; she is a two time “Teacher of the Year” in Dearborn. Sharon wrote a book based on a true story of a little girl coming into her class with her much loved teddy bear. The little girl was asking for help finding a new home for “Teddy” because her family was entering into a homeless shelter and she was only allowed to bring one toy, she had chosen to take “Dolly” which her grandmother had given her and she needed a new home for “Teddy”. This was a heart wrenching story; it literally moved me to tears.
The impact on me was the realization of the needs in our communities. We all know these are tough economic times; people have lost jobs, homes and families. But, the simple needs in our communities of simple items like diapers for the food banks and shelters at the rate of thousands per month. The need not only to donate money for those diapers or the diapers themselves but the need for volunteers to drive them to those food banks and shelters is overwhelming. The children of our schools who have raised money by selling their own toys to help others in need at the local homeless shelter are to be admired for they are learning at such a young age the meaning of community. We have people in our community like Annemarie Valdez and Sharon Ottenbreit who are impacting people’s lives everyday through their work and their passion. Please help support them in your thoughts or prayers and any other way you may.
I just ask you, have you impacted someone’s life today?
Tim Schramm
