LIHU‘E — “There are people doing things all over the island today,” Steven Kaui said Saturday. “They are doing projects in neighborhoods as part of the Jesus Christ Of Latter-day Saints ‘Helping Hands’ project.” Starting from about 9 a.m., Saturday,
LIHU‘E — “There are people doing things all over the island today,” Steven Kaui said Saturday. “They are doing projects in neighborhoods as part of the Jesus Christ Of Latter-day Saints ‘Helping Hands’ project.”
Starting from about 9 a.m., Saturday, groups garbed in yellow smocks that have become a trademark of the LDS program, addressed problem areas in communities from the North Shore to Kekaha.
“We’ve got groups cleaning ‘Anini Beach and everywhere in between through Kekaha,” said Bishop Jeff Venzon of the LDS, Lihu‘e Ward.
Kaui said the LDS Kapa‘a Ward was doing work cleaning the multi-use path as well ad doing work in the New Kapa‘a Town Park, concentrating on the Little League fields.
Venzon said he wasn’t sure where the LDS Kalaheo Ward was doing work, but they were sure to be out in the community as well.
According to the LDS Web site, the Mormon Helping Hands program was officially established in 1998, and since that time, hundreds of thousands of volunteers have donated millions of hours of service to their communities around the world.
Although the program is most often associated with emergency response, disaster relief is only half the story of Mormon Helping Hands.
Ten years ago, the LDS church asked local church leaders in Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Chile to reach out in their communities through service. This led to South American church leaders establishing an annual day of service.
In the period of a decade, Mormon Helping Hands has spread to every corner of the world, touching the corner of Lihu‘e where the Kaua‘i High School softball team ran last-minute practices in anticipation of its participation in the state softball championships next week.
The LDS site states that large-scale service projects have been completed from South America to North America, Europe, Australia, Asia, and more recently, Africa, where 100,000 volunteers worked together in a continent-wide Helping Hands project to clean up their communities.
A key to the growth of the Mormon Helping Hands program is that it is not a program that was pushed. Rather, it was allowed to grow at its own pace as more and more LDS church members were naturally attracted to the opportunity to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with their fellow church members and neighbors in activities that benefit everyone, the site states.
Visit www.newsroom.lds.org for more information.
