Long-Term Hope: Convoy of Hope Community Event Connections
What started with one pickup truck filled with groceries and a desire to serve families in need, has transformed into hundreds of Convoy of Hope Community Events that have taken place across the nation.
Over the past 25 years, Convoy of Hope has served more than 2 million Guests of Honor at approximately 1,200 Community Events. Guests of Honor have their immediate needs met with bags of groceries or a new pair of shoes, but Convoy doesn’t stop there. We also provide people with long-term solutions to help them thrive. We do this by connecting them to job and career services, community services, health services, veterans services, or other organizations, such as the National Breast Cancer Foundation.
The desired outcome for each event is to provide sustainable solutions that address the deeper-rooted issues and concerns in a community. Our “one-stop shop” connects them with the opportunities they need to help them get to the next step and see the possibilities they couldn’t before. We provide Guests of Honor a “hand up,” not a handout, at these events.
Take Tomasa, a Guest of Honor at a Community Event in Fort Worth in 2017. She picked up a Garden in a Bag, which contained vegetable and flower seeds. After planting the seeds, she now has a flourishing garden that takes over part of her backyard. Tomasa came back to the Fort Worth Community Event in 2019 to get more seeds and to see how she could start a community garden in her neighborhood.
Darcy, an unemployed single mom with three children, attended the Fort Worth event this year and went straight to the jobs and career Services tent. There, she found an organization that would pay for her to go back to school to get her license as a certified nursing assistant. She signed up for school and filled out an application for a job. She left feeling excited about what her future could hold.
These are just two examples of what Community Events are all about. Guests of Honor leave with a sense of empowerment and the ability to move beyond obstacles and tough circumstances in their life.
To learn more about Community Events, click here.
