Darryl's Annual Birthday Charity Fundraiser (please read!)
Hello everybody. It’s July 4, which, as everyone learned in elementary school, was the famous day on which I was born in 1981. Every year, we do a birthday fundraiser for a women’s shelter called Kristina’s House of Hope. Over the last few years, we’ve raised tens of thousands of dollars, and helped raise KHOH from a rinky-dink operation to one that has served and helped hundreds of desperate women pick themselves up off the floor and restart happy and productive lives. I hope you guys will come through again. I’m shy about asking you guys for anything more than you’ve already given me, because I know I haven’t been as productive as usual recently. It’s been a tough year, and I’ll explain everything soon when the next episode of Enemy is finished. But this cause is important enough to overcome my shyness and ask anyway.
I won’t take too much more of your time with this post, but please let me tell you a bit about KHOH. Earlier this year, I attended a fundraising dinner for KHOH and learned a lot more about the woman who runs it, as well as the women she serves. The founder knows what the women are going through, because she’s been there. Many years ago, she was homeless, drug-addicted, and desperate, but by the grace of God she saw the light and got her life back on track about twenty years ago. A few years back, her own 20-year-old daughter was having problems, and was tragically killed in a car accident. Rather than wallow in guilt or slip into depression, her mother decided to start a shelter that would help other women who needed it. She knew nothing about running a charity, nothing about running a shelter, navigating local government, or anything at all, really. She just knew that if she opened her doors, God would send women to her, and she would help them. At the dinner, I met and heard from several of the women who had been through KHOH. Their stories were harrowing. I heard stories of homelessness, prostitution (sometimes forced), abuse, addiction, often all began while they were still young girls who should have been playing with dolls. The women who show up to KHOH have tried every other avenue, and many of them were on the brink of suicide before God sent them there. These women, and hundreds of others like them, are now stable, sober, happy, and productive. Several of them now work with KHOH to counsel other women. It was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. If you’ve ever known anyone who was truly at rock bottom, you know what a miracle it is to see them make a full recovery. That is what KHOH does.
Every penny you donate goes straight into KHOH’s operations. The woman who runs it doesn’t even take a salary, even though running KHOH is her full-time vocation. We’ve been telling her that it’s OK to take at least some compensation for the work she puts in, but she refuses - and this is not a wealthy woman by any means. Your donations pay for clothes, food, toiletries, counseling, life skills & job training, addiction services, and other things that go directly to the women KHOH serves. I know these people well, and I can promise you that, 100%. There are a lot of problems in our society, and we all occasionally think “someone should really do something about that.” These are people who took that to heart, and they are doing something about it. So let’s help them do it.
I have started things off with a $2,500 donation, and I hope you will help to whatever extent you can.
There are a few ways you can donate.
For the next week, anyone who signs up for an annual subscription to this Substack ($50 p/year) will send half the subscription fee to KHOH.
Bitcoin address: 3JbQTMWgzEHt8wKxS5cCxG36ZvtXFCzphx
Thanks again everybody. You are truly the best audience in the world. I don’t deserve you, but KHOH does.
I’m a delivery driver for one of the 3 big delivery companies (fed ex ups Amazon) and I work in Oswego County where this is located. I’ve done just about every route in the area, if you live in Oswego and order from Amazon, I’ve probably knocked on your front door before.
I’m not from the area originally, and when I started delivering out there, I was honestly shocked by some of the extreme poverty you find in the deep corners of the country that surround the city. Trailer parks with every roof covered in tarps because the people who own it don’t have the money to replace the roof. Cars that are more rust than steel. And the people who live in these dilapidated trailers and old farm houses often answer the door with pale skin bloodshot eyes twitching from whatever substance is destroying them.
Fulton is a great example of a small city 10 minutes from Oswego that used to host a giant Nestlé factory, now the factory moved overseas and the whole landscape is just abandoned warehouses surrounded by desperate people and crumbling infrastructure
I remember when I first started, I had to learn to not sheet houses as “can’t deliver, vacant” because early on I did just that only to find out that there was an old lady living in this trailer that, I thought, there was absolutely no chance a human could be living in
https://www.syracuse.com/news/2022/05/in-oswego-countys-world-of-despair-the-children-suffer-the-most.html?outputType=amp
Here’s a good article about the crushing despair that surrounds the area it’s really brutal to see every day
So anyway, thanks for looking out for my neck of the woods DC we certainly need it. And if anybody’s thinking about donating, you can take it from me that it’s going to good church going God-fearing people, even if they are struggling with substance abuse, and lack of economic opportunity.
Has the fact that the entire country launches fireworks in celebration of your birthday ever gotten to your head? I imagine it’s hard to stay humble with while having such status.