GROWING PAINS-- it happens and sometimes it can be the best of things--for My Sister's Place we are looking at the community and how we can be of help to all people living in it--and so, to that end, we have joined the LAFAYETTE SQUARE AREA COALITION and we will be attending some of those meetings to see where the gaps in services are. We are also hoping that we will be able to move our current operations to a larger area for the recycling/jobs component of our mission. We plan to talk with that group to see if there will be community support for our efforts in that location.
I have also been participating in a recycle group through Innovate Indy--we have been meeting weekly to work on ideas on how to develop a recycling hub that will address the massive quantities of recyclable materials that end up in the landfills and re-divert them to a central location and make them accessible to those who can upcycle and recycle those items into an end product. We have named our group, RE-HUB and we are working on a website and mission statement.
I have also been networking with other agencies: DAO RECYCLING has been gracious in the past with letting us piggyback on their collection days; we have donated clothing to HORIZON HOUSE and more recently helped a local NPO- People For Urban Progress (PUP)-with connecting them to a local business, DEEM MECHANICAL which will be donating flatbed trucks/labor to help them recover the Busch Stadium seats for re-use in the city.
For our future I would like us to continue being of service to others; to be able to collaborate in such a way as to enhance those services already out there in the community. We don't want to "re-invent the wheel", we do however, want to be able to encourage others to all work together. It just makes sense!