This past week the Carrboro Board of Aldermen heard a joint presentation from IFC's Chris Moran and OWASA Board Members Braxton Foushee and Wm Stott about Taste of Hope. Taste of Hope is a joint effort of OWASA and the Inter-Faith Council. Any OWASA customer can sign up to have their water bill rounded up to the nearest dollar; the extra change allows IFC to assist struggling local families with their water bills.
At first it may not sound like much, but a home with no water is no home at all. Even a little help with an OWASA bill can make the difference between being homeless or not for families trying to make ends meet in this difficult economic time.
This program will cost you less than $12 per year, but can help prevent homelessness in our local community. To learn more, go to:
http://www.owasa.org/customerService/taste-of-hope.aspx
If you are ready to sign up on line, go to:
https://www.owasa.org/Forms/TasteOfHopeRequest.aspx
And if you are on Facebook and want to help a little more, please join our Facebook group:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_157760077616910¬if_t=group_r2j
And post a status update on your wall inviting your FB friends to join as well! Thanks!!
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Join Sylvia Hatchell!
An open letter to the Community from UNC Women's Basketball Coach Sylvia Hatchell:If you are new to the Chapel Hill-Carrboro area community, or even if you have lived here for some time, you may not know about a small but excellent program that helps local families when they can't pay their water bills.It's called the TASTE OF HOPE program and it is funded with voluntary donations from Orange Water and Sewer Authority (OWASA) customersHere's how it works: When you sign up as a donor, your monthly water bill is automatically rounded up to the nearest dollar. The added amount becomes your monthly donation, which is turned over to the Inter-Faith Council for Social Service (IFC) to help local families or to WaterPartners International for water projects in developing nations.Is the Taste of Hope program efficient? You bet! All of the donations go to help people in need—but it will cost you, as a donor, less than a dollar per month. So, being a contributor is simple and painless.To the families who are able to start or keep water service because of your donations, the Taste of Hope program makes a huge difference. Can you imagine what it would be like to be without water—to be unable to bathe, wash dishes and clothes, and flush the toilet?About 1,000 of the 19,000 OWASA customers have signed up as Taste of Hope donors. Why isn't this program more well-known? Because OWASA is a non-profit agency and it does not use its normal revenues from customers to promote or to fund the Taste of Hope initiative.How many local families get temporary help from Taste of Hope? Not nearly enough. The IFC can assist only about 200 households a year with the annual donations totaling about $6,000.The need is much greater because current economic conditions make it hard for many working families to keep up with the rising costs of fuel, health care and other necessities, especially in the winter.Please join me in supporting the Taste of Hope assistance program. To sign up or get more information, please call OWASA at 968-4421 or visit the OWASA Website, www.owasa.org.Yours truly,Sylvia R. Hatchell, Head CoachWomen's Basketball Team, University of North Carolina at Chapel HillP.S.: If you are not an OWASA customer and you want to contribute to Taste of Hope, you are invited to send a donation directly to the Inter-Faith Council at 110 West Main Street, Carrboro, NC 27510.
Why?
I don't understand why you made it a closed group on FB. I signed up for Taste of Hope years ago and am happy to promote this to others. But I don't think they should have to ask to support the program. Please take this as a request to make your FB group open so that we can LIKE it and encourage others to contribte.
It's open as I know how to
It's open as I know how to make it. I can't figure out how to change that setting (despite a good deal of searching). It almost seems as though FB has made it so that all Groups must be admission-on-approval only. I must be doing something wrong.
No--you're right
I was just coming over to say that I played around with it this morning and now understand the FB technology limitations that constrain the ability to set up a group as open. If OWASA or IFC wanted, they could create a page that would allow others to "like" the program and recommend it to others without the constraint of asking to become a member. Sorry I didn't do that research first. It wasn't meant as a criticism.
Thanks, Terri.
Thanks, Terri.
NationBuilder
My son Jesse and another local kid have just made public a tool for social organizing. I really don't understand these things well, but I encourage you to check it out and see if it fits any of your needs.They have worked on it for a couple years and just opened on Wednesday and got great response. They aren't around here.It is on the web under NationBuilder. Jim Gilliam and Jesse Haff.Cheap - to build democracy, not make a million - so I'm told.