Guest Blog

Hi there!  Now that summer's ending and fall is approaching, I've completed my vacations until the holiday season.  That means I'm back here.  And this time with friends, volunteers, great people doing great work!

This week's guest blogger is our board member, raising awareness council member and the Dean of Students at Southern Oregon University, Jonathan Eldridge.  He's also the guy I saw walking with his two beautiful children last weekend.  Jon and his kids had walked to get donuts.  Yep, I just gave him up!  And now for Jon's thoughts and the big news is this time you can add feedback!

Jonathan Eldridge...The United Way of Jackson County’s annual campaign kicks off soon. The campaign allows United Way to support dozens of community agencies and organizations that promote education (helping children achieve their potential), income (helping families become financial stable and independent), and health (promoting healthy lifestyles).

In these times of local, national, and global financial instability, there are those who think a campaign like this won’t be able to reach as high or raise as much as it needs to. People are spending less. People are focusing on their own (often precarious) needs.

I think we will meet our goal. I think we will exceed our targets. And I think this because of Mike Mulligan and his steam shovel. You may recall this children’s story by Virginia Lee Burton. It was one of my favorite books when I was a child. The story goes like this….

Mike Mulligan had a steam shovel named Mary Anne.  Mary Anne did great work—but over time Mike and Mary Anne hit upon hard times. In order to survive they needed to dig a cellar for Popperville’s new Town Hall—in just one day. Could it be done? With the encouragement of more and more townspeople, Mike and Mary Anne found a way to work a little faster and a little better and finished that cellar just as the sun was setting.

This is where you shout, “Hooray!” But Mike and Mary Anne dug so fast that they were down in the new cellar with no way out….until they came to understand that if they reframed their thinking, they didn’t need to get out. Their future was secure if they could go about things differently. Mary Anne became the new furnace of that new Town Hall. And so Mary Anne and Mike lived on in their newly configured, different-yet-still-critical role in the community.

The United Way of Jackson County is known for supporting reframed thinking and innovative approaches to local issues. The approach to this year’s campaign might be informed by this creativity. I believe that this year’s campaign will resonate in new and powerful ways with people across Jackson County.

We all see neighbors who have hit upon hard times. We all see services we have come to count on being threatened or eroding. We all see people not unlike ourselves—who seemed immune to an economic downturn—now unemployed or out of their homes.

Despite this, we know that our communities are only as strong and stable as we are willing to make them. We know that giving what we can in the form of time, compassion, and, yes, money will make the whole of our communities greater than the sum of their parts. And somewhere inside we also know that we could be the one in need, perhaps much more easily than we ever thought possible before. That alone creates a new level of understanding and appreciation for the importance of education, income, and health.

So even in tough times, by working a little faster and a little better, the United Way will continue to expand its reach, to touch lives, to exemplify the best in our communities….and help all of us reframe what it means to Live United.