ECHO: A Chronological History 1968-2010 by Various

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ECHO: A Chronological History 1968-2010
by John Gauthier & Various

I picked this book up at the library a while back because I used to volunteer at ECHO when I was in high school and thought it would be interesting to learn more about it in the years before I was a part of it. ECHO=Ecumenical Community Helping Others.

ECHO is basically a basic needs donation center for emergency help for families. They have volunteers who help them get resources including food, clothes, household goods, school supplies, skills training, transportation, computers, etc. Here is a definition of ECHO's services from page 48:
"ECHO assists those in need when they can't be assisted by established government organizations and then only to the extent of temporary or emergency support. ECHO does not want to engage in such activities that tend to make the recipient permanently dependent upon welfare when they can, through their own efforts, achieve independent living."

It was started by a pastor who had a lot of people in need approach him for help. We don't really have a homeless shelter or food kitchen or anything of that sort in my community now or then. So he asked clergymen at other churches what they do. The answer was that they ask others in their churches to help out when they can. But they soon realized that if they all bonded together, the group of people able to help was expanded. The group brought dozens of different churches of different religions together in an attempt to connect families in need with families able to help that specific need. Today, it's not family-to-family in the same way, because they soon were given a house where they could store the resources in order to distribute it to others.

The first house was... incredible compared to what ECHO has now. There was no bathroom, no electricity, no phone line, no running water. People would break into it and steal things or volunteers would not be consistent with what got given out to different people. They were able to successfully help many under difficult circumstances. ECHO has no staff, just volunteers.

It was really neat to read about how ECHO started and evolved over the years (they just expanded their building which stands close to where the original house used to be). So neat to see all the different faiths and people of the community come together to help everyone who needs help without discrimination. It was a pleasure to volunteer there for 5 years, and now I have an even better understanding of the organization. I even sent them an email afterward to thank them for putting the book together (loved the photos of the building changing over the years), and I sent them a few photos of my own from my time there.