The Help List

TeenPact Leadership Schools, in conjunction with the Jimmy Brazell Foundation, presented the Third Annual Jimmy Brazell Impact Scholarship First Place Award to TeenPact student Gina DeLorie from Florida.

Read her award-winning essay below, written in response to the topic question, “How have you impacted the world or your community through servant-minded, Christ-like love?”

A couple years ago in my World View class, my teacher had an idea of putting together small bags for the homeless.  These bags were filled with combs, bars, juice boxes, first aid kits, toothbrush kits, and other kinds of consumables, along with the plan of salvation and information for a local Christ-centered shelter.  Every person in the class brought something different to put in these bags for the homeless.  Once the bags were filled, we each got about 6 to give out to homeless people.

In the city which I live, there are homeless people everywhere. You have to remember though, that there are homeless people who want to remain homeless.  Not all homeless people want help.

There’s this homeless man I see just about every day traveling to and from my neighboring cities.  He has a bike, which is covered with bags for some reason, and he either rides it or walks with it beside him.  He too is covered with bags.  I was driving home from school when I saw him walking with his bike on his daily journey.  I stopped and I handed him a bag which he refused.  After that I was confused about why he didn’t want the bag and I was kind of discouraged. The first homeless person who I tried to help refused my help.  I questioned if handing out bags was really something that I should be doing, or if God even wanted me to help the homeless.

The next person I handed a bag to was a lady on the side of the road with a sign.  I stopped at a stop light and I handed it to her through my car window.  She was so grateful once she had the bag.  After handing out that bag and knowing that I did something to help someone, even if it wasn’t much, I wanted to do everything I could to help the homeless.

Soon after successfully handing out all of the bags, I found out that my biological mother, who passed away when I was 10, was also homeless for a time in her life and she struggled through mental, emotional, and substance abuse.  This caused me to see homeless people in a completely different way and I wanted to actually do something to help the homeless in a greater way then just handing out bags.  In 1 Corinthians 13:13 it says, “And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.”  For quite some time I have volunteered in local churches, shelters, nursing homes, charities like Children’s Miracle Network, and others.  The overwhelming need for connecting people in need with the charities that could help them became apparently clear.

So, I decided that I wanted to create my own non-profit organization and website.  There are so many homeless shelters out there and I wanted to create a site where you can search for any homeless shelter near you and they all will come up.  After thinking about my website, I went to our local homeless shelter, “The Mission”, to talk to the owner there.  He gave me some advice and he was really the one who encouraged me the most to create this site because it is greatly needed.  It is intended to be a resource center for anyone who is in need of help related to homelessness.  For example, if you were to run into a situation in your life where you had nowhere to turn to, you could go to the website, type in the name of your city, and a list of local charities would appear that you could immediately connect to for help for your specific need.

My website, “The-Help-List.org”, is now under construction.  I just recently had my logo created and I now just have to get the site running.  I have made a Facebook page which is called The Help List, Inc.  For now, I’m focusing mainly just on the homeless because they are who I’ve had the most experience with, but in the future I plan on adding resources for all those in need.  Military families, those with disabilities, addictions and others will be able to find help from my site.

I believe that this is a calling and opportunity that Christ has put into my heart that I may show Christ’s love as I am an ambassador of that love.  Christ says to be in the world, but not of the world.  So, I have chosen to make my charity, The Help List, Inc., open to all charities which opens the lives I can touch to the scope of the unsaved all across Florida and eventually across the entire United States.  My goal over the next 10 years is to make “The Help List” a household name.