HURON, S.D. — For years, people have walked through the doors of Huron Helping Hands looking for a little help — a box of nutritious food, an affordable shirt or household necessities that could make a difficult month a little easier.
Then Helping Hands became the one that needed help.
A July 2 windstorm and tornado severely damaged the building that housed the nonprofit. Mold growth meant much of its clothing and other soft inventory had to be discarded. The building became unusable, and the organization faced an unsettling possibility: It might have to close and dissolve the nonprofit.
But Huron wasn’t ready to let that happen.
According to the Huron Daily Plainsman, Helping Hands organizer and board member Karen Nelson reached out to Gary Goeller, owner of a building the organization was considering as a new home. Goeller showed the group the space at 230 Third St. SW and worked with Helping Hands on the numbers.
A path forward began to emerge.
And then more people stepped in.
Members of the James Valley Christian Vikings soccer team arrived to help move furnishings and other items. Nelson told the Plainsman the players cleared items from the walls in about an hour.
Local businesses contributed, too. Just Fabulous donated body forms and extra clothing racks. The Sioux Empire Lions and Noon Lions provided an 84-inch cooler that will help the nonprofit keep produce longer. Donations from the community helped replenish the operation.
Piece by piece, people were helping Helping Hands get back on its feet.
The Heartitude Lens
There is something especially meaningful about a community caring for an organization whose purpose is caring for the community. Helping Hands couldn’t accomplish its mission alone before the storm, and it couldn’t recover alone afterward. Neighbors, young athletes, businesses and civic organizations each offered what they could. That’s Heartitude in motion: recognizing that someone else’s ability to keep giving matters to all of us. Sometimes “Go Give It” means helping the helpers so their kindness can keep traveling outward.
The reason preserving Helping Hands matters can be measured in the people it serves.
Nelson told the Plainsman that its food pantry assists roughly 155 to 225 people each month and reaches residents in 11 to 12 communities, including Wessington, Wolsey and Miller. Food boxes are designed around staples such as vegetables, fruit, pasta, cereal, milk and eggs.
The thrift operation supports that work. Donated goods are sold at inexpensive prices — including $1 clothing and 50-cent children’s clothing — and store proceeds help purchase food.
That means the community’s donations can do double duty: provide affordable necessities for one neighbor while helping put food on another neighbor’s table.
Now, after a period when its future was uncertain, Helping Hands is scheduled to reopen its store Sept. 1, with food boxes resuming Sept. 15.
Nelson described the community as the organization’s “lifeline.”
In Huron, that lifeline held.
A storm damaged a building and forced an organization from its home. But it also revealed something harder to see on an ordinary day: a network of people willing to carry racks, donate equipment, offer a new space and give what they had so an organization devoted to helping others could keep doing exactly that.
Live with Heartitude. Go Give It.