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Photo by Austen Smith
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From left to right are Mary Hagrow, Eleanor Walker and Dutch Jordan. They have worked together to promote HOPE America.
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Giving back to the community is a powerful thing.
It provides a message that delivers hope and goodwill to our friends, family and neighbors. Unfortunately it is a message that doesn't reach everybody, and sometimes misses the ones who need it the most.
When tragedy struck Ann Arbor-based Real Estate Agent Mary Hargrow's life, this message became loud and clear. But it wasn't always like that for Hargrow.
"More than two years ago, I had the unfortunate incident of my nephew being killed," Hargrow says as her friendly exterior turns bleak in remembrance.
"I was taught by my parents that you really need to be part of the community. And I didn't really understand that for years, as an adult. We sit out here in the suburbs, we get to live the good life and we don't think about the other side, about the people who have to endure this kind of tragedy every day."
From this tragedy, and from this message - the recently formed non-profit organization HOPE America was born.
Hargrow explains the organization's purpose best when she says it was formed from the frustration of good and decent people who have to endure a society that is being overrun by crime, poverty and hopelessness. HOPE stands for Helping Ordinary People Excel.
"We need to get back in control of what's going on in our society," she says.
"We can no longer (sit back) anymore, if we don't take control and put a stop to these people then they're going to take over and we will lose.
"The rapid rate of murder, crime, robberies - it's too rapid, and the good decent citizens are caught in the trenches with no way out.
"After my nephew's murder, I got to thinking about all that. We as business owners and others in society, we have to think about the people in the neighborhood. It is just amazing that the man who killed my nephew, it doesn't even bother him to destroy a family like that. This country is dying and that's where the name HOPE America was born."
While the inspiration for HOPE America was born from a terrible tragedy and influenced by Hargrow's love of the community - it took a dear friend to help get it off the ground.
Longtime Ypsilanti resident Dutch Jordan has known and worked with Hargrow since the early 1980s. It was Jordan who taught Hargrow early on that it was incredibly important to be involved in the community and to give back.
"I've been selling real estate for long time, and I became very good friends with Dutch and worked closely with Dutch for a number of years," Hargrow says. "Dutch was always going out, when he was still active, and meeting people and doing things for the schools. I knew his heart was always in Willow Run schools.
"He always preached to me that I needed to give back, that I needed to get myself involved. See back then, I was just making money and I never really understood what Dutch was trying to say to me even up until the point when he retired."
She added, "But now, I understand what Dutch and my parents taught me. And that made me want to do even more for the community. People are out there every day, working hard, doing the right thing, trying to instill the right values in their kids and now that's even being threatened - we have to fight and take this back."
While Jordan played a significant in the inspiration and early stages of HOPE America, he insists that he is simply a facilitator and that it has been the work of two wonderful women - Hargrow and Executive Director Eleanor Walker - that has really jump-started the success of the organization.
"It was a very serious tragedy that set Mary on this mission. The task is a tremendous responsibility and in a matter of months she and Ms. Walker has put this organization together and have an established and proven track record. HOPE America is indeed her mission," Jordan says.
Helping People
In the beginning, Hope America struggled for success despite Hargrow bringing the best and brightest business owners and community leaders to help get the organization off the ground.
It was at that point that Hargrow contacted Walker, who had established a proven track record with non-profits in Alabama, and asked for help.
"I called Ms. Walker at the end of the year last year and asked if she would be interested and coming up here and running HOPE America," Hargrow says.
"(Walker) has a beautiful track record and she has compassion for people, and she understands how to execute the programs and education that we are trying to bring to the people."
Hargrow says it wasn't until Walker started with HOPE America at the start of 2007, when things really started happening and the organization was able to hold its first food drive in June.
"At our first drive, we had more than 2,000 people attend. It was held out at the K-Mart on Washtenaw Avenue," Walker says. "The drive was set from 9 a.m. to noon, and we and some volunteers arrived at about 5 a.m. that morning so we could set up. When we got out there, there was already people out there waiting. They had been out there since about 4 a.m."
In just a short period of time, Walker has witnessed first hand the great need for programs and aid offered by HOPE America. In an area ravaged by unemployment, Walker says they are able to hold food drives and take on individual cases for families who are simply unable to make ends meet. What makes it worse, are the other non-profit aid organizations around Washtenaw also are struggling and are having to turn away a lot of families.
"The thing about the food and clothes drive is that you make an immediate impact with families who desperately need that aid," Walker says. "You just realize how devastating it is with people losing their homes, with foreclosures and evictions. People actually don't have any kind of recourse or support.
"HOPE America is very much needed in the area and we are hoping to become a pillar for people and we do that by partnering with organizations and businesses who are able to donate."
HOPE America has already forged partnership with corporations such as Bed Bath and Beyond, Old Navy, The Gap and Office Depot. Walker says they receive donations of old merchandise and other items from these stores that are used in the drives.
In August, they were able to hold a second drive for back to school, there were 1,500 people who attended that event.
"If we're able to help people with like clothing, personal hygiene items and just the stuff that they need from day to day - then that helps fray the cost of paying rent or a mortgage," Walker says. "After that first drive in June, our phone just started ringing off the hook. You have people fitting to get put out but we just can't help everybody. We are operating on a shoestring budget. We are under-funded at this time."
In addition to the drives and aid programs, HOPE America provides financial and budgeting educational classes for the people in the community who need to learn about controlling spending the most.
"We feel like education is very important," Hargrow says. "When you are dealing with people with low income, and a lot of those people also have credit issues, those people need to be educated otherwise they're just going to keep coming back to the same well,"
Hargrow wanted to start the classes as she felt that kind of information could benefit a wide range of people especially young couples who have unexpected pregnancy and single mothers having trouble making ends meet.
"It seems like people in America have gotten away from taking care of the people who need to be taken care of," she says. "What we are saying here, is that we want to give you these things but we also want for you to understand where they come from, and how to take care of yourself."
And for Hargrow and the rest of the HOPE America organization, it all starts at a grassroots local level.
"We always hear about the Red Cross and the Cancer Society, but all of that is heard from the national level. We don't do enough on a local level," she says.
At the August drive, Ypsilanti City Councilman Brian Filipiak was one a among a number of volunteers. Hargrow recalls having a conversation with Filipiak, where he said that he simply wasn't aware that it was this bad and that people were is such desperate need.
And that's why, Walker says, organizations like HOPE America are so important to the community at large.
"What people don't realize is that if it wasn't for grassroots organizations meeting needs for people, they will break into your businesses. They are going to steal to eat," Walker says.
"Do you think that people are going to think about integrity if they need to feed their children? Non-profits and those types of organizations should be applauded for the services they bring to the community because this is where crime starts - people lack, they don't have.
"It leads to the deterioration of the family, and in the end we have gangs and drugs being turned out and this is what is being bred in our community."
Ever since starting HOPE America, the poverty and hopelessness that lies at the very root of the organization itself, is something that Hargrow has experience first-hand.
"I have people calling me saying, 'Help me Ms. Hargrow. I'm losing my home, I'm losing my job,' and you sit there and say to yourself, 'If I just had enough money to help all these people,'" she said.
"We have a genuine, caring organization which is also incorporated in Alabama and it's time for people to get involved. Everything can't be left to the churches.
"We just genuinely want to help people."
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