Hands4Hope - Youth Making A Difference
supports U.S. Veteran and deployed soldiers

What we do

As an organization, we aspire to give voice to youth on issues affecting their community and give them the opportunity to take action in their own way. We are working to develop civic minded and socially responsible youth, while teaching them skills that will benefit them for a lifetime, such as communication, collaboration, organization, and problem solving.

We do this through our Education & Community Engagement Programs:

The school-based Service Learning Clubs are the biggest part of our Education Program, with the after-school service learning project committees coming in a close second.
Our Community Engagement Program compliments these by offering youth the opportunity to practice hands-on direct service in the community.

How we do it

The projects the youth do are chosen and organized by them, and each year, they choose to focus multiple projects on veterans and deployed soldiers.

They run drives to collect supplies for soldier care packages and outreach to homeless and struggling vets.
They write letters, color pictures (our younger youth), and do fundraisers for needed supplies.
They serve breakfast at our local Veterans Hall
They help the local organization Honor Our Troops with a Spaghetti Feed Fundraiser to raise funds for mailing the care packages.

One of our youth committees chose to fix dinner once a month at a local Veterans Hall, and in addition to preparing and serving it, sat down and had dinner with the vets, listening to their stories.

We have partnered with Honor Our Troops for the past 11 years to assist with the care packages they send three times a year.

We have also partnered with Operation Good To Go, founded and run by a local vet. We have assisted him in filling military-style sea bags with supplies for homeless vets and raising funds to assist with other needs.

Our youth have also done multiple fundraisers to provide PTSD trained dogs to be matched with vets.