Living United

Working in a newsroom, we get our share of bad news. Senseless violence. Child molestation. Even politics qualifies these days.

Somedays we get more than our share of it; we get our fill of it. 

So it’s nice to have a week in which we can see ourselves and our neighbors at our very best, working together for a common good and a shared goal of helping others.

That’s what the United Way’s Week of Action has been. It’s a week of helping others, of creating opportunities for children to grow, of helping families improve their lives, of keeping older neighbors maintain their independence.

News doesn’t get much better than that. 

The projects brought out corporate support, by Hewlett Packard, Conway Corp. and others, and by other neighbors, whether in pairs or by the dozen.

Jennifer Bickers, the resource development director for the United Way of Central Arkansas, doesn’t have the final numbers on the volunteers yet, but she says it appears to be significantly higher than the 375 who took part last year. She says the number of individuals who have signed up may have doubled from last year.

A few people even completed one project and then called to look for more helping to do. And she said others have turned a day of helping an older person with yard work into an ongoing commitment to help out.

When everything around us seems to be pointing out the differences and the divisions among people, we find reassurance that in what really matters, people are still looking for ways to reach out and help each other.

Beyond helping others, the whole sense of working together builds community, whether it’s a Sunday school class, a team of workers from a business or a social group. By taking the group out of the usual surroundings and context, the individuals learn about each other and about themselves. Going back into the workplace, or back into the old environment, they may find their abilities as a group to be enhanced.

The unity created by a day of sweating together for a goal can build a sense of teamwork that is hard to create working at the same task the rest of the year.

But the Week of Action isn’t completely finished, either. 

Bickers says that the Stuff the Bus project to gather school supplies will have drop boxes available until the end of the month at a number of bank branches in Conway and the Walmart on Dave Ward Drive. 

And the Conway Interfaith Clinic will be taking donations of clinic supplies during business hours in the coming week. Needed supplies include such things as peroxide, rubbing alcohol, antibacterial hand soap, bandaids, gauze and facial tissue, Bickers said.