Help REACH accomplish what still needs to be done | Guest column
Published 5:00 pm Friday, November 20, 2015
BY CHUCK SIGARS
REACH development coordinator
I am the early riser in this household, a product of habit but giving me the privilege of serving as the universal moral compass for all that is right and is good. In other words, I’m in charge of the coffee.
Which is why horror struck my household the other morning when not one coffee bean remained in the house. Not a scattering of grounds. Not even instant.
The problem is that making an early morning trip to the store to buy coffee usually requires coffee to start. A conundrum, I guess, or what we sometimes self-deprecatingly refer to as a “first-world problem.” We recognize that our trivial inconveniences – a slow Internet connection, a slower I-405 commute, a house temporarily without coffee – are just that: Trivial.
Yet it only takes some reflection, or just a walk around town, to demonstrate that here in Renton we have a first-world problem that is anything but trivial.
Starting with a state of emergency announced by the city government of Los Angeles, quickly picked up by Hawaii, San Francisco and then Seattle, we’re slowly becoming aware that there’s a crisis – it could be called an epidemic – of an increasing homeless population in the U.S. It’s a third-world problem that seems unacceptable in this country, even one suffering from economic inequality, a rising tide lifting only a few people and a whole lot of rents. The American dream is still in the dreamy stage for many of our citizens.
And this is why we are REACH, and have been since 1970, when a group of Renton church leaders tried to establish a working relationship which each other, attempting to focus on what they could accomplish as a common goal to serve their community without devolving into arguments about theology or dogma.
In May 2013, REACH (Renton Ecumenical Association of Churches, “ecumenical” meaning unity), opened the REACH Center of Hope at Renton City Hall, providing a safe daytime environment for homeless women and children, with hot meals, showers, access to computers and other means of re-entering the world of regular housing and employment.
In addition, several area churches serve as rotating night shelters, again a safe place for single women and children to spend their nights with support.
There are other programs REACH provides, such as the Renton Meal Coalition, but what we do is not quite the point.
How you can help is the point.
This week of Thanksgiving, when many of us count our blessings and eat way too much, is REACH Awareness Week, as we hope to bring attention not to what we do, but what still needs to be done. As with other communities we’re now facing a burgeoning homeless or near-homeless population, cold and hungry people just now entering the stormiest and coldest seasons for our area.
Of course we need help. Financial help, certainly, but more than that we want to help our community see that our “first-world problem” has a first-world solution. And while we approve of the recognition by city governments that a crisis exists, the pace of politics has always been glacial.
This is where you come in; Check out our site at reachrenton.org and on social media. Visit the Center of Hope and see what miracles are being accomplished. Come to an evening meal and dish out food to grateful hungry people, and see how you feel the next day.
This is REACH’s true mission, not to fix homelessness in our community and country, but to fix it with your help.
That’s what we’re asking: Help us help. We can be surprised at what happens when we stop staring straight ahead and be human, see suffering and want to end it, see need and want to fix it, and understand that this is hard, but not impossible. It’s just sometimes sort of a reach.
Chuck Sigars is REACH development coordinator. Information about REACH is available online at www.reachrenton.org.
