The other day St Paul Episcopal Church and the Montana Human Rights Network shared in sponsoring a presentation featuring Soft Landing Montana, a group which works with refugees living in Missoula. The purpose was not to bring refugees to the Bitterroot, as has been erroneously reported, but to show how passionate people can organize grass-root organizations to help those in need. I was pleased to be a part of that meeting.
While we do not need such an organization in the Bitterroot Valley since we have no refugees, I feel that we need more such organizations to meet other needs. There are so many needs in the communities of the Bitterroot Valley. Veterans, children with reading disabilities, pregnant teenagers, high school drop outs, lack of jobs and hundreds of other issues face the Bitterroot, and we need to move beyond the expectation that Washington DC is going to fix these problems. In almost 40 years of being a Christian clergyman, I have never seen a local problem resolved without community involvement.
It is hardly a new idea. We have such organizations as Pantry Partners, the Stevensville Senior Center, SAFE, CASA, the Bitterroot Humane Society and many more that local people struggled to open and maintain. I applaud their efforts, and the efforts of others who are willing to work to meet the needs of others rather than simply talk about how someone else needs to do something.
We have a community of compassion in our Valley that we can be proud of. It is my hope and belief that compassionate and caring people will continue to seek to help others in our communities and make the Bitterroot Valley an even more wonderful place to be.
Richard Seaver Reynolds
Hamilton