A Hope Tree

Join us Friday, June 17th from 4 PM – Sunset at Yosemite Park for our humble Hope Tree, a collection of more than 200 hopes from our neighbors in Eagle Rock, California.

The Story

In May 2010, fifty Community Listeners spent an afternoon in Eagle Rock, California asking their neighbors about their hopes, their hearts, and their lives.

We talked to more than 200 people from every walk of life. Small children. Grandparents. A few friends. More strangers. Folks just passing by. Lifelong residents.

This was a chance to for a community to come together to listen, learn, change, and grow. Each and every conversation was important, and they all started with one simple question: “What do you hope for?”

For three hours, we listened and wrote down our neighbors’ responses. We heard simple hopes: that more people would sing and share music, that people would respect one another, that children could succeed at school. We heard deep hopes: that a nephew would be returned to a family, that a man could get off the street, that a struggling neighborhood would see things turn around. Beautifully simple and yet tremendously deep, for three hours our ears were tuned to nothing but hope. And we walked away amazed at how listening to our neighbors’ words transformed us.

The Tree

On June 17th, we are excited to share with you the 200 hopes from these Eagle Rock neighbors with our first ever Hope Tree so that you too can be transformed. Hanging from our Hope Tree will be hundreds of leaves, each a window into the hopeful heart of one of the people we spoke with. Plus, you’ll get a chance to hang your own hope on the tree.

After the event, this entire collection of hopes will be compiled and distributed to every school, non-profit, civic organization, and house of worship in Eagle Rock with the invitation to reflect, absorb, and learn from what their neighbors are saying. This will be the first time this community has received a collective picture of what their neighborhood is hoping for.

Join us for this event and a chance to watch a small community to share their biggest hopes.

— The Hope Chronicles Team

Save Hope Gardens!

Our Community Listeners Brian and Starr joined us during our event at Urban Plunge 2010. They came back with this story:

Hi Friends —

A few weeks ago, we did a service project with an organization called Door of Hope. Door of Hope is a transitional housing program for homeless families. We did a service project there last year as well and it is an amazing place of refuge for homeless families with no place else to turn. Anyhow, after our time there we participated in something called a Hope Walk. A Hope Walk consists of going into the community (we were in Pasadena that afternoon), meeting people, and asking them what there hope is- for the day, for the year, or just in general. Then depending on how the encounter goes, this would open up conversation, a time of prayer, or just a friendly exchange before parting ways. Brian and I ventured out together on our Hope Walk and saw a couple about to cross the street. We decided that these would be the first people we would meet and talk to. After they crossed the street, Brian approached them and asked if we could borrow a moment of their time. He then noticed the jacket that the gentleman was wearing… it had a Union Rescue Mission logo on it.  Brian asked if he was affiliated with the mission, and it just so happened that he was Andy Bales, CEO of the Union Rescue Mission. “Wow,” we thought, “what a coincidence.” We asked him what his hope was and he immediately answered that one of the URM facilities, ‘Hope Gardens’ was in jeopardy of being shut down and that they needed to raise $2.8 million by June 30th in order to keep it open. So that was his hope…that the money would be raised and Hope Gardens could stay open. We prayed for him and the fundraising efforts there on the corner, and the rest of the day we were amazed that out of all people we could’ve met, that we met someone whose entire life is centered around homelessness, fighting it, changing it, preventing it, and transforming the lives of people who experience it. By the way, Hope Gardens is a transitional housing program for homeless families. Just like the Door of Hope where we had spent the day.

So now you know what we know. Hope Gardens needs to raise $2.8 million by June 30th in order to stay open. To date, they have raised $1,715,875 which means that they still need another $1,084,125. That’s a lot of money. In a little amount of time. But God can do it. And he can do it through us, so Brian and I are doing what we can do…which is reach out to you and ask for help. We figure that if everyone we know donates $10 to the cause, and everyone YOU know, donates $10 to the cause, then before we know it, the money will be raised. Hope Gardens will be saved. And families will be kept from going back to the streets.

1) Click here: http://www.urm.org/ and donate $10. Donations are currently being matched by an anonymous donor.

Thank You!
Brian and Starr

Urban Plunge 2010: One Thousand Hopes

On May 22, 2010, more than 250 people volunteered as one-day Community Listeners for Urban Plunge 2010, a community outreach event based in Eagle Rock, California. Pairs of volunteers went to public spaces all over the city to discover the hopes of more than 1000 of the neighbors all over Los Angeles. They wrote down whatever they heard and spent some time deep in conversation with people from their community. Listening to their hopes and learning a little more about the City of Los Angeles.

These are those hopes. Raw and unedited. Misspellings and all.

Take a closer look at what Los Angeles hopes for.

Urban Plunge 2010

Click to see photos from Urban Plunge 2010 — All Images Copyright © 2010 Madison Garcia Photography

Love and serve the city.

That was the call to nearly 250 volunteers from across the Los Angeles metro area on May 22, 2010.

All morning, teams from communities all over LA joined Christian Assembly Church for their biggest outreach event of the year. Volunteers scattered to locations all over the city to serve at more than 20 local schools, shelters, and other non-profit organizations—an event very similar to Big Sunday Weekend.

Then, these teams partnered with us to participate in our largest Hope Chronicles event to date—listening to the hopes and stories of more than 1000 Los Angeles neighbors and getting to know their communities a whole lot better.

Click here to see all of our Urban Plunge Stories to date.

Starting today through Thursday, June 3rd, we’ll be sharing stories from Urban Plunge with you. Every day, we’ll have a new Hope Conversation video from a community in Los Angeles. From Skid Row to the University of Southern California, Downtown Burbank to the Flower District, these conversations offer a glimpse into the hearts of people all over the city.

Plus, you’ll get a chance to hear from the dozens of Urban Plunge participants themselves—telling their stories about what they saw, how they’ve been changed, and how they are beginning to serve their city in a brand new way.

Finally, we can’t wait until Friday when we’ll be introducing an interactive hope map where you browse through the more than 1000 hopes collected from Los Angeles neighbors.

It’s a completely new way to see what a neighborhood thinks, knows, and feels.

Get ready for an amazing week.