Episode 95: Delivering Hope!

I'll give a little bit. I'll give a little bit of your love to me. I'll give a little bit. I'll give a little bit of my love to you.

Hello everyone, this is Travis Thomas. Welcome to the Inspired to Give podcast. This is in conjunction with the weekly Yes Am podcast. Where I occasionally will dive into guests as well as subject matters that is in partnership with Inspired to Give. And this week, we are talking about our holiday hope for the homeless. This podcast is all about We Gave Hope. And so wanted to share a little bit of the experience that we did locally here in Jupiter, Florida, in Palm Beach, Florida, where we were inspired to give. And this is how we were inspired to give. And just to get a little bit of a background or context, but many of you know, actually on Inspired to Give, we talked about Rack Friday, everything that we did for Rack Friday this year and have been doing for Random Acts of Kindness Friday, which is the day after Thanksgiving, which is usually known as Black Friday, but we are rebranding that as Rack Friday by helping people spend a day trying to commit as many random acts of kindness as possible. Our goal is to eventually Let's shift Black Friday to being Rack Friday. How cool would that be? So we've been doing that for about 4 years now, 4 or 5 years, which just really from Thanksgiving through the rest of the holidays, it just builds up this awesome sense of momentum as shifting your intention from, what can I get? to, what can I give?

Right.

That's that whole improv mantra of trying to make each other look brilliant, to make your partner or make someone else look good. So this whole idea of shifting from what can I get to what can I give, and it's just been a very healing and a very inspiring and transformational way of blessing others. So we did that this year. It was the biggest sort of event that we've done. We had nearly 2,000 random acts of kindness committed and shared, which means that there were probably more. And so we came back home after the holidays, and then our local church that we attend here in Jupiter for the last— oh, I don't know, 5 For the last 5 or 6 years, as a church, we have been going to the Salvation Army Angel Tree, and everyone can basically take an angel off the tree and then go buy those gifts for that needy child, and then the church reimburses us. So it's awesome. We go from Wreck Friday, we go into the Salvation Army Angel Tree, and it's great because my wife and I, we've got 3 young kids, and it's such an awesome experience for them as we all go to the store. We think about the children because you know the child's name, their age, and what they want. And to think about, you know, a child, uh, that's roughly their age and for them to kind of be in the giving mood and the giving spirit. And it's been— it's had a really cool impact on our family that we've been doing it all these years. And so we're super inspired by that. And we finished that and had a couple of weeks before Christmas, which is what we celebrate, and a couple of weeks before Christmas. And I got an I got tagged, I think, on a Facebook post about some guy and I think he was in Australia maybe. But it's just a quick video of showing him going to the store, buying a bunch of throw pillows, a bunch of wrapping paper, a bunch of toiletries and necessity-type things, going home, throwing everything on the pillow, wrapping them into these big gifts, and then walking the streets and giving them to homeless. So literally giving the homeless gifts instead of just a handout. Right. And sort of recognizing that everybody is entitled to receive a gift during the holidays, and just how special that is, and giving them a hug. And I got that video, and I'm like, "This is so cool. We need to do this." So you know, it's like a week and a half before Christmas, and I'm like, "All right, we need to do this. How do we do this?" So I contacted a friend of mine here in Jupiter who has two juice kind of like acai bowl and juice joints called Rock Steady Juice Joint. And I actually— he's on a previous interview on one of my Weekly Yaps. His name is Drew Thompson. And I said, hey Drew, send him this video. I'm like, we should do this. And he responded, awesome, let's do it. And so really quickly, in the span of 24 hours, I went out and I bought donation boxes. We put donation boxes in his 2 stores, as well as a donation box up at the Bigger Pitch soccer facility, which our friends run and where the kids do soccer. So we got a donation box up there. And then I set up a GoFundMe page. Which some of you probably heard from me because we were raising money for GoFundMe. So we threw all this together. We found a homeless foundation in West Palm Beach that services the homeless of West Palm Beach. They said, hey, would love to use your, your holiday gifts that you put together. Just do us a favor, instead of wrapping them as gifts, can you put them as gift bags? Because we just kind of need to check the contents. We're like, awesome, totally makes sense. And they're like, and if you make the bag, a durable reusable bag, the homeless recipients will actually be able to use that bag as well. So it's like literally a gift where they're 100% using everything, including the bag. And so that was our goal. We're like, all right, let's start doing it. So we started, you know, trying to collect supplies with the donation boxes. But the GoFundMe page, you know, I was like, how much money should we try to raise? We basically had like just over a week to do it. My wife and I are like, I don't know, $750. Let's just Aim for big, $750. Well, we reached that in like 2 days, and lo and behold, 10 days after we launched it, we got $1,800 in donations. We got a bunch of donations in the donation boxes, and then we all met at Rock Steady the Thursday before Christmas. We asked for anyone who wanted to come up and have a little social event and put these bags together, and we put 50— we raised enough money to put 50 bags together. And these bags, they had pillows, blankets, socks, underwear, toiletries, gift cards, encouragement notes, treats, snacks. You know, we just, we packed them to the gills. And then we packed up our minivan, and a group of us took them to the homeless foundation down in West Palm Beach. And we really didn't know much about the foundation. And we delivered the bags, and they were so grateful. They were so excited to see us. They really sort of received us in when we dropped him off and they're like, can we, you know, can we tell you guys more about what we do? And we're like, absolutely. So, we kind of got a tour and different people spoke to us. And here's the thing, it's called The Lord's Place. It's in West Palm Beach and they service all the homeless of West Palm Beach. They have multiple housing campuses where at any one time they are housing 300 individuals, men, women, and children who were at once homeless. So they're trying to get them in transition out of— they're trying to end the cycle of homelessness. So they have 300 people under their roofs at once on different campuses, but during the year they will service roughly 1,200 people in their homes. But then here's the kicker. Out on the streets still, there's over 1,500 chronically homeless individuals. And the way they service these people is that they have a team of like foot soldiers who basically walk the streets and create relationships. create genuine relationships with these homeless individuals. They give them tips. And what they're trying to do is just create a relationship where they can encourage them, hey, when you're ready and you want to try to get out of this, we can help. And so, they're creating these relationships. And again, there's like 1,500+ of those. So, our bags were going to be delivered to those people who are chronically homeless, and only 50. And then I walked away, we only were able to create 50 bags? So, I felt really small. I felt like, oh, this was awesome, but it was small. Now granted, I'm so grateful for everything that we were able to do from everybody involved at Rock Steady, The Bigger Pitch, Massive Soccer, all our friends who contributed. But I walked away after dropping those bags off and saying like, what more can we do? So I want to end the chapter in one aspect and say, It was awesome. It was amazing. I haven't had more fun doing anything. Like, Wreck Friday, I mean, it's right up there. And it was just so much fun to be in that zone for 10 days with the only intention was, how can we raise more money? How can we put things together? We gotta make it big. We gotta make it good. And so I'm not— so here's the feeling. I'm super inspired. I'm super motivated because I see the need. I understand the need more, and I want to do more. And I know I'm not the only one who wants to do more. We were all impacted when we kind of got the full scope, uh, from, from going to, uh, the Lord's Place. And so here's my idea. It's a bigger idea. I'm putting it out there. I haven't even met with the Lord's Place yet, but I'm putting it out there because I'm like, This is what I would want the bigger idea to be. Next year, we need to raise some serious cash so, A, we can throw a giant Christmas party for all of the 300 individuals who were on the streets and are now in transition with The Lord's Place, right? There's 300. They're, they're getting training. They're getting help. They're transitioning out of homelessness. Wouldn't it be awesome to put on a big Christmas party for them, or holiday party? for them with a dinner, with gifts. You know, maybe the kids can sit on Santa's lap, right? So a big event like that. And then here's the thing that I want to do at that party, at that homeless party. I then want to try to create 1,500 holiday gift bags for the chronically homeless and actually have all of us who are at that party, including the 300 who used to be on the streets, Have all of us create those holiday bags, which will then be distributed to the chronically homeless. That's what I want to do. That's my big idea, and that's gonna take some serious money, which I will begin starting to try to raise ASAP. So be on the lookout for that. And so that is how I have been inspired to give. And again, and so many of us, so many people who got involved with this just kept coming to me. Travis going, this is awesome, we need to do more. It's like, this is awesome, we need to do more. This is awesome, we need to do more. So that's what we want to do. We want to do more. And I realize it's going to require my efforts all year in order to pull something off big like this, but I'm up for it. I think we're up for it. If you're listening to this and you found this, be in contact with me so that we can find a way, you know, whether it's looking for, for business sponsors, contributions, all of that to put an event like this together. This is what we want to do. We want to make it happen in 2018. So that is the plan. And I want to end this. I want to end this with a really cool, cool story. So the day that we went down to West Palm Beach and dropped off the bags, we we dropped them off and then we went downtown and had lunch. And some of us went to one place, but a few of the younger kids, Shepherds, my ten-year-old, and his buddy who's ten. And then their other friend, a brother who's 14, the 3 of them went and ate at their own place. And we're like, after you guys eat lunch, we'll meet you in the park. So, we had our lunch, they had their lunch, we're walking down to the park, they're already there, they're playing around the fountains. And my son's buddy came up to me and said, hey, um, Shepherd, uh, we had an extra bag of chips and, uh, so— and there was a homeless guy in the park. So, on their way to the park, they saw the homeless guy. My son, Shepherd, took out the $3 of change he had left over for lunch, gave the homeless guy his cash and a bag of chips. And this is— I love my son. He's an amazing kid. But that is not something he typically does, especially on his own. So, I was blown away by it. And that to me is like, if we're doing anything as parents, as far as trying to show the way for our kids, that nails it. And that's bigger than any gift I could have received this holiday. And so that was the impact of Holiday Hope for the Homeless. And so here we go, 2018, bigger and better. If you want to jump on board, get involved now. We'll take all comers. But there you have it, everyone. Thanks so much. If you enjoyed this podcast, If you enjoyed this podcast, please feel free to share it with others because, again, we need to make this big, right? Thank you to Inspired to Give as well as the weekly Yes And podcast. You can follow me @LiveYesAnd on social media. Obviously, you can follow Inspired to Give on social media as well, as well as the website. And that's it, everybody. Thank you so much. If you enjoyed this podcast, give us a rating on iTunes. 5 stars. And that's it, guys. Have a wonderful New Year. Happy 2018, everyone. It's gonna be big. It's gonna be good. 'Cause we have hope. Have a great day.

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