Helping Hands for Charlotte

01/05/2021

Happy New Year Helping Hands!!
We ended 2020 with a very successful food and gift drive and delivered gift and food to 'The Roof Above' and 'The Harvest Center' on December 21st. Holiday spirit was evident in the generosity that poured in. We collected enough food to feed over 400 families.
We made 270 large ziploc bags filled with individually wrapped food and drink items as per the request from "The Roof Above', we donated these to the men's shelter. When I called in the morning to confirm delivery my contact at the shelter said, "please take the food to our men's shelter, they have not had food there for last two days". Needless to say it was overwhelmingly emotional and gratifying feeling to take food to people who so desperately needed help. In addition to the 270 ziploc bags we took additional food and bags, enough to make 300 or more bags, for them to make more handouts as needed. Our second stop was The Harvest Center, where we delivered gifts and food to the families who were at the center. Many families around the shelter are going thru hardships and the shelter shared some of the food with those families as well. Below are some kind words from Mr. Terrance Barber with the Harvest Center.
"Good Morning Sonia Bhave,
We pray that you had a blessed Christmas with your loved ones. Thank you, Helping Hands of Charlotte and the volunteers so much for all your tremendous donation of food and toys. Our program participants, as well as a few of our community neighbors, were able to pick grocery items they needed and get toys for their kids. Thank you for being so thoughtful and generous.
Blessings,
Terence Barber | Partnership Director "
Our heartfelt gratitude to all those who donated generously, we could not have done it without their help.
Special thanks to our ambassadors for this drive, Sonia R. Hassani, Ritu Dass Dewan, Ashima Khanna, Srilaxmi Gunda, Meghana Patel, Sona Dhar and Vasavi Shetty.
A huge shout out to Marda Kornhaber, Sunil Vallabh, Sanjeev Hassani, Meera Sachdeva, Krish Kashyap, Roshan and Sahil Bhave for their tremendous help and support.
Loves...

12/11/2020

It is the season of giving

Helping Hands for Charlotte’s
Holiday Food and Kids Gift Drive.
December 14-20th 2020.

Dear generous hearts, we will be holding a food and kids gift drive from December 14th thru the 20th. This year the holidays are going to be especially tough on many families. Let us try to make them a little happier.

Our beneficiaries for this drive are:
The Roof Above
And
The Harvest Center
Both help homeless and needy families. The Roof Above is a merged agency that provides comprehensive homeless services to many shelters.
The Harvest Center is for non- chronic homeless families and individuals.

We will be collecting nonperishable store-bought food items like holiday desserts (pre-cooked/ nonperishable like cookies, fruitcakes), canned foods, cereal, mac and cheese, cranberry sauce, canned meats, chicken/ tuna lunch packs, juice boxes, fruit cups, Ramen noodles, individually packed snacks, spoons, gallon size Ziplock bags.

For one shelter that does not have cooking or heating ability for their residents they suggest we make Ziplock lunch bags. For that we will need
1-gallon zip bags
Chicken and or Tuna lunch packs
Ramen noodle in a cup
8 oz water bottles
Juice boxes
Individually wrapped snack like peanut butter crackers, ritz crackers, Oreo etc. Fruit cups.
Spoons

We will also accept wrapped gifts for kids ages 0-16 years. Please brand new gifts in original packing preferably with a gift receipt. No gently used items.

Thank you in advance for your help and generosity.

You can deliver your donation to the following members:

Sonia Rai Bhave
Raveena Kashyap
Indira Vallabh
Srilaxmi Gunda
Meghana Patel
Ashima Khanna
Vasavi Manepalli
Sonia Hassani
Sonia Dhar
Ritu Dewan
Niketa Mittal
Sneha Shah

If anyone else would like to volunteer to receive donations at their home, please contact Sonia Rai Bhave.

08/30/2020

On August 15th Helping Hands concluded our toy drive, this time helping little hands and minds at ourBRIDGE for kids. Our heartfelt thanks to all who donated generously. Special shout out to Niketa Mittal for suggesting and initiating this drive, and to all the children ambassadors and their parents for making this drive successful.🙏🏼

06/17/2020

SUMMER TOY DRIVE
(For Ages 5-15)

**INVITING MIDDLE AND HIGH SCHOOL** to volunteer to collect donations and get volunteering hours.
Helping Hands is having its next donation drive. We will be joining hands this time with ourBridge to collect NEW (preferably) and/or gently used toys, puzzles, board games and card games like Uno and Dominos etc. that have no missing pieces and include the manual. This will benefit the children who do not have free and available access to internet and to technology. This will also assist with them making close connections.

We request anyone donating to please only give what you think your own family would use.

The Toy Drive shall continue through June and July.

Dear Friends, please feel free to reach out to your friends and neighbors for this Toy Drive and contact any of our Ambassadors or volunteers for porch Dropoff. Pls reach out to Admin if you would like to volunteer for the SUMMER TOY DRIVE and/or receive volunteer hours. TIA

Admin:
Indira Vallabh
Ravina Kashyap
Sonia Bhave

Ambassadors:
Nikita Mittal
Ritu Dewan Das
Lopa Das Roy

About ourBridge for KIDS:
ourBRIDGE for Kids is the only non-faith based organization in Charlotte and surrounding areas that offers trauma-informed after school and summer programs to refugee, immigrant and
asylum-seeking children at no cost to their families. ourBRIDGE focuses on the students’ English acquisition, socio-emotional well-being and cultural pride and appreciation. ourBRIDGE works with families that represent over 20 cultures from Latin America, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

ourBRIDGE is driven by a vision to strengthen the community we belong to from the inside-out. It is in our culture to be responsive and adaptive to the needs of our families and neighbors in any situation we face together, including times of trial like the current COVID-19 global crisis.

05/13/2020

05/13/2020

Message from Jennifer Holcomb!

04/28/2020

We all “together” did it again!! It was a very successful Easter Food Drive! We collected over 500 grocery bags of love. The beneficiaries of this drive are Jennifer Holcomb, Heart for Monroe, Inner City families, Mecklenburg School Pantries-Crestdale Middle School and Bruns Academy!

The donations were delivered to Heart for Monroe on 4/22. We were greeted by a beautiful quote, ‘’For where two or three gather in my name, there I am with them”- Matthews 18:20. There is a force of love behind this generosity. After heart of Monroe, with help of Mr. Torrie Tillman we personally delivered food to families needing help. Gratitude was the only feeling we left with.

Thanks to our pillars, Helping Hands For Charlotte Ambassadors, Lopamudra Das Roy, Arun Kallikadavil, Niketa Mittal, Aparna Desai Gopali , Ritu Dass Dewan, Sonia R. Hassani , Sarika Vikram Bhanott -Bollywood Glimpse, Beyond Creation Team – Meghna, Rakhi, Sejal, Sonu, Shweta, Shilpa and Sarita. Your hard work and partnership are much appreciated.

This would not be possible without generous donations from Vasudha Agrawal, Shilpa Pochmpally, Shweta Rewtani, Sonu Agarwal, Saejal Karavadi, Sarita Annamaraju, Rakhi Nagrani , Meghna Joshi, Sunita, Pooja Dawani, Neelima, Uttara Gothaskar, Smitha Panchlagia, Jayshree Kalyansundaram, Pushpa, Kavita Rohera, Karishma, Monali Guha Malhotra , Malini Chandra , Anupriya Tyagi, Chaitanya, Uma Kalani, Saptami Sarkar, Ekta Shah, Ankita Modi, Meghna Patel , Aarti Rathi, Constance Ngozi Udenze , Heather Halpin, Maitreyee/Fanil Shah, Nisha Kumra , Nisha Dawra , Dipa S, Neera Mahajan, Shama, Bejal Mehta, Alexandra Allmacher, Aparna Batra Pandey , Sonia Poddar, Rakesh Kedia, Anjali Turamalla, Sandeep Roy, Vibha Joglekar, Mona Handa , Gopalis, Leah Sai, Donna Dempsey, Gen Koch, Jigisha Shah , Denise Nasca, Aruna Yadala, Smita Kataria, Sheetal Sharma, Saloni Parekh Shah , Pausha Bhatt , Shakun Malhotra , Paula Weiner, Betsy Constant, Sonia Tiwari , Sona Dhar , Manju Garia , Mala Mohanty , Sanika Desai, Neha Taksale Joshi ,Mona Bhasin, Sayali,Helen, Sreenivas-Ashima Kodali Sandy Sandhu , Sharmila Palkar, Ritu Mukherjee, Rochani Akwalia, Kaberi, Anita Tanwani Kirpalani , Vimmi Borkar, Srilaxmi Gunda, Indu Vaidyanathan Sandhya Banka Kejriwal , Prithvi Rao, Shoobha Daftary, Jaya Vyas, Varsha Chopra, Shailu Tated Singhvi, Ratna, Veena Kumar, Priya Purushe Gupta, Sangeeta, Neerja, Purnima Shah , Chanchal Khosla, Santosh Pasula, Rajesh Mahajan , Ranjitha Manchukonda, Pragna Desai Joshi, Babita Bhargava, Anne and Ray Hargreaves, Davis, Mona Shrivastava Nigam, Shantala Gopalakrishnan Helen Daly, Marda Kornhaber, Amrita Barooah, Louise Padfield and many more who left their generous donations anonymously and anyone who we may have missed ……..sincere appreciations and special thanks!!
Thank You all! Loves and stay safe.