Giving back
When my girls were young; and we had recently moved to Franklin Park from our starter home in a small hamlet called Fombell in Beaver County, I was working for Butler Hospital running an AmeriCorps program. The Family Service Corps consisted of 50 individuals who were placed in rural school districts and a variety of human service agencies and this exciting career opportunity unfortunately became a work/ life balance nightmare. After attempting to “tame the beast” for two years I threw in the towel and became a stay at home mom for the next decade.
Then I slowly morphed into a full-time volunteer at my kids’ schools and with some non-profit organizations that were doing all sorts of interesting work. It was as a girl scout leader that I became more involved with North Hills Community Outreach (NHCO). Scout troops love a good community service project and NHCO was a natural fit for our troop and kept our focus on the needs of our neighbors. Over the years we conducted multiple food drives, my favorite one being the Father Daughter Dances where we collected boxes of cereal at admission. Afterwards my co-leader and I would load the cereal and the scouts into our minivans and deliver the donations to the food pantry in Allison Park. A volunteer would take the time to give us a tour of the food pantry and answer questions about what it was like to experience hunger.
Fast forward to the present. I don’t know where this board opportunity will take me but I would love to see our community get involved too. I’ve already told them all about RCE and my desire to act as a representative of our co-housing community. Volunteer opportunities abound at NHCO and my hope is that after we get our boxes unpacked and our gardens planted we will find some time to help others. Here’s the link to their volunteer page . I hope you see something that is of interest.
-Kristi Karsh, Founder and future resident of RCE, December 16, 2024