VOLUNTEERS
A Hand UP
Helping Hands volunteers, from left, are Anne Tschinkel, Katheen Simpson, Liz Mayo, Maya Peterson, Gloria Durand, Lori Rau, Suzanne Bertman
Betty Struse and Sandy Johnson. Other members are Rebecca Hornbuckle, Rev. Casey Baggott, Fran Gilson and Jan Christensen.
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BY JANIE GOULD
PHOTOS BY GREG GARDNER
Helping Hands is an appropriate name for the women’s group that supports
the Homeless Family Center in Indian River County. Each of the
dozen or so active members brings a talent to the fold, says its president,
Liz Mayo.
“It’s a great group of women, and very diverse,” Mayo says. “They are people
who just want to help. One girl’s good at numbers. Somebody else may be
good at p.r. Somebody else is artistic and does centerpieces. Everybody’s
talent comes together and the job gets done. I’m the ringleader, I guess.”
For more than five years, members of Mayo’s church, the Unitarian
Universalist Fellowship of Vero Beach, had been cooking and delivering
dinner once a month to residents of the homeless center. The church also
donated much-needed toiletries from toothpaste to paper products. “So many
people at church had worked on the meal project and the toiletries drive and
they said what more can we do? I said we should organize ourselves,”
Mayo recalls.
A dozen women
have helped raise
more than $80,000
for Indian River
County’s homeless
center while also
providing important
volunteer help
>>