Group hears from Crisis Center resident helped by program supported by annual fund drive
Sometimes volunteers working to raise money for agencies helping people need a little reminder about why they’re doing what they’re doing.
Carthage United Way volunteers and organizers got a reminder of why they’re trying to raise $300,000 for local agencies from a resident of the Carthage Crisis Center, one of the 13 agencies supported by the local fund drive.
United Way Director Janet Stafford said she asked the agencies served by the United Way to provide success stories to remind the fund drive volunteers of the importance of their work.
Jim Benton, director of the Carthage Crisis Center, brought one of those success stories to the group’s mid-campaign report luncheon to talk to the volunteers on Thursday, Dec. 6.
“Fortunately for us we have several success stories to choose from, and it’s because of the support of the United Way and others,” Benton said. “Our mission statement is to return people who are homeless to self-sufficiency with God’s help and the support of the community. Community support is extremely important, not just financially but in another way. Our people need jobs, so it’s important that there are people who are willing to hire them.”
True needs
Benton said some of the panhandlers on the streets, especially in Joplin and larger communities, pose different challenges to those wanting to help them.
“A lot of the people who come to us struggle with substance abuse issues,” Benton said. “A lot of them are the panhandlers who you see on the streets. I was in Joplin this morning and I counted four panhandlers just going from Sam’s Club and a few blocks down the street. As I look at these people, I wonder if they really have a need or whatever else, and I’ve always wanted to find someone that I can really talk to about panhandling and what they do with that.”
Then Benton introduced Cicero Maple, an intern at the Carthage Crisis Center who has gone through the Center’s programs and now lives and works there.
No self-esteem
Cicero Maple grew up in East St. Louis, Ill., and he came to Joplin about 12 years ago to attend a substance abuse program.
“While he was in that program, he had a measure of success,” Benton said. “But he continued to struggle.”
Maple said he was a panhandler in Joplin for a few years, and he hung out with people who dragged down his self-esteem.
“I was going to church, I stopped going to church, I grew up in church,” Maple said. “All through my life I wanted to be somebody, but I didn’t know how to be somebody. I got into relationships that I shouldn’t have, and I let people control me. I was a people pleaser and from my low self-esteem and pride, that’s a dangerous mixture.”
Maple said he used opioids and helped others get other drugs during his time on the Joplin streets.
But the Carthage Crisis Center helped him clean up his life. He’s been clean of drugs for 22 months now.
“Now today, I’m at the Carthage Crisis Center,” Maple said. “Economic Security was going to give me a place last week, but I felt everything you want in a home, the love and compassion and concern people have for you, and people you can talk to and trust, I have that at the Carthage Crisis Center. I call that my home and I don’t want nobody coming in and messing up my home.”
Chasing $300,000
Campaign Co-Chairwoman Samantha Osmotherly, with Schreiber Foods, said the different divisions and committees of the Carthage United Way are working hard to meet the fund drive’s goal of raising $300,000 by February 2019.
She announced that the drive had reached $173,460, or about 58 percent of its goal as of Dec. 6.
Nicole Anderson, with ESM Technologies, described some of the ways her co-workers had worked to raise their donation to the United Way.
Anderson said the workers at ESM had held a month-long Bingo contest, where participants payed $2 per Bingo card and received new numbers throughout the month. Winners received prizes that were donated to the contest.
They also had pizza day, where the company bought pizza for lunch and workers donated a couple of dollars each for slices of pizza.
“We did a doughnut breakfast as well as a kickoff breakfast, everyone brought in a dish like a pot luck, and we paid $2 to have a plate,” Anderson said. “Our biggest generator of funds comes from a raffle prize drawing we did in October.”
Osmotherly said the final awards luncheon will be at noon, Thursday, Feb. 7, at a location to be determined.
The drive will continue through February.
