A Four Year Reflection
A guest post from Jeff Divers, Alyssa’s Dad and Board Chair of The Alyssa House
"As I was taking down the blue Christmas lights at The Alyssa House on Saturday, I realized that not only had the Holiday Season ended but our fourth full year of operations had come to a close. Can you believe that it has been four years since we opened our doors?!
From the start The Alyssa House has been keenly aware that we were completely dependent on your acts of generosity to be able to provide — free of charge — this refuge for the children and their families. We stepped out on faith, without a penny to our name, and you have come through for us time and time again.
During 2020 our awareness of this dependence was heightened as the pandemic turned the world upside down and disrupted everyone’s lives. For us it meant that we couldn’t hold fundraisers and weren’t able to interact with our volunteers, and we had to take significantly different measures to minimize Covid-19 exposure for our immunocompromised children and their families. With hard work and with creativity we found ways to manage these things because kids getting cancer, needing transplants, or being born prematurely were among the few things that the pandemic of 2020 did not disrupt.
But we had no idea how your lives were affected… and how that would affect your capacity to support us so that we could continue to support them.
But you found a way… Some of you gave for the first time and some of you even tripled your donation from years past! We are grateful that you value the work that we do and the population that we serve, and on behalf of The Alyssa House staff and Board of Directors, I thank each of you for acting on your compassion for these immunocompromised children and their families through your support.
The new year is looking like more of the same limitations and workarounds for The Alyssa House, and we’ll do what we’ve done since the beginning: we’ll step out on faith knowing that you embrace our families like we do and will come through for them.
We look forward to continuing our relationship with you this year."
Jeff Divers
The Alyssa House Board Chair
&
Alyssa’s Papi