Speaker 1: In January of 2023, my son was diagnosed with autism level 2. I started hearing about a new client called Easter Seals that we were going to be doing an onboarding for. They provide services for all kinds of people with different learning disabilities and different disabilities in general. And while my family was really trying to navigate this new journey and find out how to move forward and to best find the services that he needed, at the same time I got a call from Easter Seals. All of the sudden, I became a client of one of our clients. Everything just came full circle.

Speaker 2: I was in the hospital and I was talking with my nurse. She had told me about a story where her brother had served in armed services and he was at war and he came back with some brain injuries and some trauma and he had really gone through a tough time and actually become handicapped. I do a lot of work with the Wounded Warrior Project and so I had reached out to someone I knew there and it was amazing to me. They had a peer reach out to him within a matter of days.

Speaker 3: My visit to MidOhio Food Collective was my reminder of why I do what I do each day. Recently there's been rollbacks in the SNAP program. They were sharing with us they are seeing over a 60% increase of need from their community. I was just struck at the vast amount of services. During my tour, I asked one of our guides, I'm two seconds away from driving up here each week to come and help and volunteer, and he paused and looked at me and said, what you can do is make sure that we are maximizing charity engine so that we are raising as much money as possible to help all of these people.

Speaker 1: As a mom that works from home, one of the things that when we found out about his diagnosis, I immediately started thinking I haven't done enough, I haven't provided enough for him and just started feeling the guilt. The people that I've been talking to over the phone have really helped to calm that and say, this isn't about anything that you have done or haven't done, and we are here to help you, let's write your son's story moving forward.

Speaker 2: They had a whole system in place to really, you know, steward him. I remember she emailed me like three or four months later and told me about what an impact it had on her brother's life and her whole family. They're able to do that because of the money they raise. Without the right systems in place, they wouldn't be as effective. That's really at the end of the day what it's about.

Speaker 3: And I walked away as a reminder of why I chose to work for Charity Engine, to help other communities, to help individuals, and really help make a difference in the world.