WICHITA FALLS (KFDX/KJTL) — Texoma Gives is about a month away, and one community fund is getting ready to begin its own annual campaign.
The Hands to Hands Community Fund is hoping to keep serving the eight nonprofit agencies they support.
For more than 10 years, the Hands to Hands Community Fund has been helping organizations like The Arc of Wichita County, the Boys and Girls Clubs and Court Appointed Special Advocates or CASA.
Supporting these organizations allows people like CASA Supervisor Brooke Shewmake to benefit from CASA and give back to them after a CASA worker helped her.
“I know that had this program not been around back then, and had it not been here now, I wouldn’t have made it this far, and I wouldn’t be here in front of my daughter,” Shewmake said. “And I wouldn’t have built this life for her because I don’t know what it’s like to have what she has, and I’m able to give it to her. So thank you CASA.”
The fund also helps the teen emergency shelter, which helped Queen finish high school and prepared her to go to college at Midwestern State University.
“I never imagined that the girl who arrived with one suitcase in hand, not knowing where she belonged, left with a determination to find her place in the world,” MSU sophomore and former teen shelter resident Queen said. “Home could be anywhere. For me, it was the emergency teen shelter. But love is what makes any home prosperous to slingshot you to victory.”
The beginning of the pandemic was tough on the operating costs of the agencies, but thankfully, Hands to Hands had one of its best years last year and is hoping to continue that trend.
“The slogan this year is 100% thankful because this community has embraced us really for the past 13 years,” Hands to Hands Community Fund Executive Director Nancy Brown said. “When we first started, they embraced us and knew that there was a need to support these other agencies.”
“This is something that agencies could not do for themselves. They wouldn’t let them come into the hospitals or into the schools one on one,” Brown said. “They needed an umbrella-type organization like Hands to Hands to be able to do that. And that’s what we’re able to provide for them.”
Hands to Hands hopes to continue giving a helping hand to others as they pass it along.