Hello from Our Team at Hope

December Hope News

…and what’s coming in January

Welcome Hope Family,

Whether you are a regular at Hope on Girard or just joining us by way of our website, WELCOME!

As we roll into 2024 and our 4th year of service, we are excited for the future! We will continue with regular recovery meetings and the events that have been staples in our schedule, such as our monthly Second Saturday Sobriety Event and Big Book Potluck. We also will be adding new events too, such as our bi-monthly Dining with Dignity Event and various pop-up fun stuff! Please visit our website and social media pages often.

If you were at Hope to ring in the New Year with us, you saw the introduction of The Hope on Girard Website. Special Thanks to Taste Creators for their great work on our site, it is absolutely beautiful, and we are extremely proud of it. This site will be instrumental in broadening our reach. What a great start to the new year for us! The site will be growing and changing often, please visit it frequently, especially the Events page.

Visit HopeOnGirard.com

Aside from our regular 12-Step meeting schedule, December was packed with events…

On December 9th, our Hope gang provided hands on service at the 4th annual Holiday Soup Kitchen at the Gables Stirling Guest Hotel in Reading. Pa. It’s the second consecutive year that Hope has had the privilege of doing service at this event and it was fabulous!

Owner and Proprietor, Cesar Gonzales sure is one of a kind. He invited us to stay the weekend and was he not shy about putting us to work! We moved furniture, organized donations, set up tables, and prepped food, until Saturday morning when it was time to serve guests.

Over the course of the day Mr. Gonzales cooked for about 700 guests from shelters and community programs in Reading.

We had the opportunity to distribute toys, clothing donations, toiletries, household items, we talked with guests, and sang Christmas carols. It was an exhausting and fulfilling weekend for all.

Reading Mayor, Eddie Moran and a journalist from the Reading Eagle were in attendance to recognize Mr. Gonzalez for his ongoing contributions to the community. It was an honor for Hope on Girard to be part of this special event.

Hope On Girard in the Press!

Click the photos to read what the Reading Eagle had to say.

Also on December 9th, we held Board Game Night for our Second Saturday Event. Thanks to the Hope members who stayed back from the Reading event to keep the doors open for this event. We have many board games at Hope to play, and as usual, people split off in groups. Groups played Cards Against Humanity, Monopoly and Scrabble.

On December 17th we went out onto Kensington Ave. and distributed coats for our 3rd Annual Winter Coat Drive.

Before organizing the mountain of coats we had stored in our basement, Joe L. showed up bright and early to provide our volunteers with a pancake breakfast.

Because of the many hands at work, it only took us about an hour to sort through the immense number of coats collected.

GO TEAM!!

After only about 3 hours in the Kensington neighborhood, we distributed 333 coats and took 3 people to the local Crisis Center for help.

For four months, our dedicated family from Hope collected coats from as far as Delaware in support of the effort! The donation boxes at The William Way Center and the K.I.S.S. Club in Sewell, NJ overflowed regularly, they were continuously emptied, and the coats were stored by our volunteers. A few of our volunteers even went as far as to wash the coats that were not in the best of shape.

We set out to have a positive impact on those in Kensington who are feeling hopeless. Our volunteers were loving, kind, compassionate and helpful to all. Special thanks to the Phila and South Jersey Messengers who took care of transporting the coats, tables and canopies to our spots on Kensington Ave. and also for securing a safe perimeter for our service work. It was great having them with us for this event and we are looking forward to much more future service with the club - Thanks family!

On December 23rd, Hope held its 4th Annual Christmas Karaoke Party.

Santa came and shared his Experience, Strength & Hope.

It was a blessing to have the Hope Family together sharing the Holiday spirit!

Talent on Girard is always top notch,

and the evening was complete with a classic performance of “Father Christmas” by the Big Man himself and his helper!

On Christmas Day, The Late-Night group provided funds for Hope to prepare and serve a beautiful Christmas dinner. There is something very special that happens when we break bread together.

Thanks to Tom H. for his hard work in the kitchen! The dinner was spectacular!!

Thank you to our friend Betty-Ann who gifted The Ladies of Hope with about 40 pocketbooks filled with goodies! Make-up, hair and skin products, books, journals, all kinds of good stuff. There were enough bags for every woman who came to Hope to for Christmas- Thank you

All in all, we were able to reach out to help many people and fulfill our mission this Holiday season. It was a joy to watch people who are new to recovery share experiences with seasoned veterans who live this way of life. Thank you to everyone who spent their time, energy and resources with us at Hope.

January Events:

1/1 New Year Alcothon
1/13 Dining with Dignity
1/13 Second Saturday Little Shop of Horrors Movie Night
1/28 Blessing Day

If you are interested in being a part of our “Hope Family”, all you need to do is show up-All are included!

Yours in Service- The Team at Hope On Girard