Local Heroes Find Ways To Help The Community
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Lois Paula: The INC Giving Project encourages volunteers in countries around the globe to share their faith through acts of kindness.
Lois Paula: Welcome to the INC Giving Show.
Lois Paula: Our communities are filled with everyday heroes. Chances are you may have met them in our schools and hospitals or while they were out delivering our mail.
Lois Paula: You might even recognize them as our local firefighters and police officers.
Lois Paula: But there are some community heroes who aren’t commonly recognized. So today we will be highlighting these unsung heroes to share how they too, are helpers in the community.
Lois Paula: Our first story takes us to Ottawa, Canada where we meet a group of healthcare workers who aren’t found at the local hospital, but somewhere else where kindness, care and support are just as necessary.
Lois Paula: The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is still continuing to leave healthcare workers exhausted.
Lois Paula: Plenty of them are struggling to stay afloat while caring for patients, but many find themselves feeling burnt out.
News Reporter: We begin by taking you back to March of last year, the nation rallied around medical professionals as they dealt with overwhelmed hospitals filled with COVID patients. Unfortunately, that fight continues.
Lois Paula: Although most healthcare workers are in our local hospitals, there are many also working in smaller facilities like retirement residences.
Lois Paula: To show these healthcare workers how valued and appreciated they are, INC Giving volunteers from Capital City and Gatineau gathered together to bring the much needed recognition and support for the healthcare workers at Governor’s Walk Retirement Residences in Ottawa.
Lois Paula: They brought along with them gift baskets and food to provide them an afternoon of appreciation and encouragement.
Lois Paula: The INC Giving members also presented a certificate of recognition and admiration for all the sacrifices healthcare workers make to keep those in their community safe.
Amanda Lepage: Thank you so much for your donation, we really appreciate it. All of our staff have been working very hard and, you know, it’s been a hard year for everyone, so it really just brightens our staff’s day to feel appreciated and just get a little bit of recognition.
Lois Paula: Thanks to our INC Giving volunteers in Capital City and Gatineau for sharing this wonderful act of kindness. It has clearly shined a light on healthcare workers in facilities outside of our local hospitals and the ways they are also helping others, especially during the pandemic.
Lois Paula: We’ll continue our episode and meet a group of healthcare workers as well who spend most of the time behind the scenes, but have played a vital role during the pandemic.
Pia Cayabyab-Eustaquio: We perform COVID-19 testing. And if the result is positive, we have the responsibility to call the doctors and the nurses so that they would be able to stop the spread of virus.
Lois Paula: As the Coronavirus spread throughout the country, lab professionals like Pia Cayabyab-Eustaquio in Fredricksburg, Washington, D.C. were quickly put to work to fight against the virus.
Pia Cayabyab-Eustaquio: We have minimal staffing, just like doctors and nurses, and also experienced long term openings. And we are also overwhelmed with the workload.
Lois Paula: She is no stranger to the high demands of covid testing that impacts her and her coworkers like Jodie.
Jodie Licalzi-Welch: Once COVID came we found it, number number one, really difficult to keep staff. One of the reasons was because it’s if you got a little bit of a sniffle or a cough, you had to go home because we didn’t want the possible exposures.
Lois Paula: Figuring out a way to help, and as a member of the Church Of Christ, Pia knew just how to support them.
Pia Cayabyab-Eustaquio: INC Giving Volunteers, they have been–you can tell that they are very compassionate, and that they’re even more sharing to help the people in the community. And the time that I that I reached out to them, they were readily available and they were willing to help.
Lois Paula: In honor of Medical Laboratory Professionals Week, the INCGiving volunteers from the Church Of Christ held a Medical Lab Workers Appreciation Day to recognize medical laboratory professionals and pathologists.
Jodie Licalzi-Welch: It is important for the staff to feel like they are appreciated, and that people understand that they’re at risk, too. It’s not just the doctor or the nurse.
Pia Cayabyab-Eustaquio: Being kind to people who work behind the scenes, will give the talented lab workers you know, to feel that to be motivated and to boost their confidence to actually do well and stay in their profession–what they do.
Lois Paula: Volunteers carefully worked together to assemble care packages full of essential items to deliver.
Aries Balaquidan: We provided hundreds of face masks, those PPE face masks and we also provided the hand sanitizers, we also provided hundreds of lotions for them to use.
Lois Paula: Pia herself saw that the efforts put together with the INCGiving volunteers did not go unnoticed by her peers.
Pia Cayabyab-Eustaquio: And they were picked up by some of our supervisors. And I was honored [by] that. Even our lab director came out to meet them.
Jodie Licalzi-Welch: On behalf of my team, the phlebotomy team, and from the whole lab, we are so grateful and appreciative of all the support that has been shown to us, especially through the Church. It’s very meaningful. It feels amazing. It feels amazing to know that there is a group, a church organization that is putting their resources to help us and to help us help others. It feels like we’re part of that community.
Pia Cayabyab-Eustaquio: Encouragement goes a long way in just affirming that, “Hey, we see you. And we thank you for what you do,” can bring tears to a lab professional.
Lois Paula: Along with giving essentials, the INCGiving volunteers also remember the most important gift they can share.
Aries Balaquidan: But most of all, our main goal is to really reach out and to propagate our faith through the act of kindness that we do around our community. So they would know also, the Church Of Christ is also want[ing] to reach out to them.
Brother Matt Karl Talens: The Lord Jesus Christ gave a commandment to His disciples that as lights of the world, we should shine brightly to all men so that they too, will glorify the Almighty God. This could be done through our good works. That is why members of the Iglesia Ni Cristo, Church Of Christ, continue to extend help to our fellow men, we show our appreciation of our neighbors.
Pia Cayabyab-Eustaquio: We do our best to always share our faith at any given time. And I just found that this opportunity to be a great opportunity, a perfect opportunity to actually have this community that we are in, they’ll be able to know more about the Church.
Lois Paula: That was a really special story. Shout out to all our Lab Pros out there. Thank you for your continued hard work.
Lois Paula: Our next story takes us to another part of Canada–Winnipeg, Manitoba to be exact. We’ll learn how important trees and volunteers are to our community. Take a look.
Lois Paula: The Government of Canada has made a commitment to planting 2 billion trees over the next ten years.
Lois Paula: On this day, over 300 INC Giving volunteers from the Winnipeg Region of the District of Manitoba helped push toward that goal and took part in planting 350 trees at Albina Park.
Kevin Lamoureux: It’s really encouraging when you have a church organization such as the Church Of Christ—a church that is all over the world nowadays—recognizing what young people and others are talking about a great deal, and that’s our environment.
Lois Paula: One of the biggest goals of planting 2 billion trees is to achieve net-zero GHG emissions by 2050, which is not an easy feat. But Kevin and his daughter, Cindy, joined the INC Giving volunteers in bringing their community one step closer to achieving this.
Kevin Lamoureux: And that’s what the Church [Of Christ] is doing here today in Winnipeg—they’re planting 350 trees. I think it’s about leadership. They’re showing up to support the environment, to plant 350 trees, and I just am so glad to be a part of it.
Lois Paula: This INC Giving event in particular was special to Cindy Lamoureux, who has joined in on multiple activities within the Church Of Christ.
Cindy Lamoureux: The reason this one is extra special for me is it’s actually in the heart of my constituency here in the north end of Winnipeg. I want to thank everyone for coming out today. Again, like I said, over 300 volunteers throughout the day on a beautiful Saturday afternoon? That takes commitment, that shows loyalty and it really is making a huge impact here in our community.
Lois Paula: Another truly amazing story. I can’t believe over 300 trees were planted. Congratulations to our INC Giving volunteers out there in Manitoba. And to all the volunteers around the world, thank you as well for doing your part. You all are truly unsung heroes as well.
Lois Paula: For more inspiring ideas and uplifting content on ways to help the community, please follow us on Instagram @incgivingproject. For conversations and inspiring stories, listen to the Kindness Moves podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or on the INC Media Mobile app.
Lois Paula: Well, that does it for this episode of the INC Giving Show. We hope this has inspired you to go out and make kindness contagious. I’m Lois Paula. Remember, whenever you possibly can, do good to those who need it.
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