The Opposite of Poverty is Community

Written by Jaya James, Executive Director of Lakeside HOPE House. Published on November 13, 2019.

“The big turning point for me was when I took some time off work to volunteer to help settle refugees in January of 2016. I found contributing to our community and helping make our community stronger extremely powerful.”

I went through this exercise of thinking about my purpose, what am I created for and what am I here for. For me, I believe that everything I do should create communities where people belong, whether it's through my family, my work, my volunteer, my other areas of life.

With supporting refugee families settle in Guelph, my role was to work with the volunteers. We had 58 families come during the time I was working on the program. What was inspiring, and there's no other way of describing it, was that within a short period of time, we had 800 people in Guelph sign up to help. To see a city so quickly come together and support others just blew me away. We had database guys come in to help us keep track of everybody and to log information. We had other people help us load the data and show us how to sort it and organize it. I had a couple who took major responsibilities for managing one of our warehouses and keeping the inventory system straight.

“It amazed me seeing all of the gifts and talents our city has. Until you have those interactions working with a broad range of people, you don’t realize how rich and how deep our community is when it comes to resources, compassion, and talent.”

Everything came together and that gets me really excited. There still are groups that are meeting together to have dinners with some of the families, It wasn’t just a temporary thing. Some relationships have really cemented and are permanent. For both groups, they belong to each other and that to me is amazing.

Someone who I respected recommended that I apply for the Executive Director role at HOPE House.

When I came in here and I took on the role, it was like I found where I belong. There are things that are stretching and tough, but I felt like it was a custom written job description for me. It’s very satisfying for me to be in a work environment where I can live out my life purpose.

“A community is a place where people feel they can belong, and a community is a place where you have the opportunity to receive as well as to give. ”

For HOPE House, we are really striving to create a community where everyone feels like they belong. We believe the opposite of poverty is community, and within the community, there are resources for people to thrive. We are trying to create a space where people know they can come just the way they are, where they are going to be encouraged and sometimes even challenged by the community to grow into who they want to be.

HOPE House is a poverty relief agency in Guelph that is leveraging the power of community to overcome poverty. We offer many of the traditional services that people think of in poverty relief, we have a food market, a meals program, a clothing market, but we really are trying to create a space where people are able to not only get their daily needs met, but are also given opportunities to grow and change their future, and it is very much driven by the individual.

What excites me the most is when our community members identify a need and then create it.

They take initiative and say we need to have an art group, or we need to have a knitting and crocheting group, or a music group, and they step forward and they lead it and take full leadership of it.

The five creators from HOPE House who were part of the Community Box are all examples of individuals who stepped forward and really took leadership.

All of us in the HOPE House community are thrilled with what their Community Box has become.

The individuality of the creators came out to play and it is a self-care box that is very cohesive. Because it has all the different pieces and all the different personalities, it became something very beautiful.

It was really cool to watch the video and hear Sarah speaking, and to see Martha, Marlene, Paul, and Ame shine.

We are very proud as friends and as fellow community members to see these individuals gifts really shine, and to see the confidence that has come from that.

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We want to take a moment and recognize Lakeside HOPE House for being the first social services organization to partner with The Community Company!

We caught up with Jaya, the Executive Director of HOPE House, to learn a little more about her journey into community development. You can click the button below to check out the Community Box we made in partnership with HOPE House.

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