To meet with Phillip Iman, director of the Laura Miller George Help Center, is to watch much of what is best in the community play out in front of you. People show up to get food and clothing to help their families through a challenging downturn, volunteers like small whirlwinds of activity boxing, sorting, organizing, and, like magic, generous donors like George Huffman on behalf of the Edmonston Foundation, stopping by to drop off checks.

On Dec. 15, Iman passed the six-year anniversary mark since stepping into his role at the Help Center, and it is inspiring to listen as he talks about the meaningful impact that the Help Center and its programs have on the community. Two of the largest things going on this time of year are the Adopt-a-Child Program and the Salvation Army Red Kettle Campaign.

Each year the Adopt-a-Child Program accepts applications from the first of November to the first of December and then distributes the donated toys to parents and guardians who want to give the children in their care some holiday joy at a time when the family financial situation would have made that difficult. In an insightful spirit that characterizes so much of Iman’s outlook, the caregivers pick up the toys and wrap them themselves, allowing them to feel some ownership and pride in the giving. The program gave out 328 gift bags this year, and some years it has even gone a little over 400. As the donated toys start coming into the center, including a trailer load from the Freedom of the Road Riders Local No. 13, they have to pile them up in what is normally their boardroom. Then volunteers work as hard as North Pole elves to process them all to fulfill the applications they received.

The other big project each Christmas season is the Red Kettle Program—the bell ringers. In wonderful partnerships with Wal-Mart and Moser’s, bell ringers are stationed at both stores each Friday evening and Saturday morning. This strong volunteer effort, including Iman himself to cover shifts, adds between $3,000 and $7,000 to their fundraising each year. This year, there is an added bonus, because Moser’s launched an initiative where people could donate to the program at the check-out register between Dec. 1 and Dec. 31, so it will be exciting to see how that boosts the campaign. Iman shared that people are often surprised to learn that 85 percent of the funds raised through the Salvation Army campaign stay in Audrain.

“If you know anything about national campaigns, that is incredibly generous,” said Iman.

In addition to these seasonal efforts, the Help Center runs a year-round thrift store and a food pantry. To get a sense of scale, the food pantry served 1,058 households in December alone, with an average of 2.5 people per household. Last year they provided over two million pounds of food. It can be hard to have a sense of what that means, so for context, an average shopping cart can hold around 220 pounds. Take a minute to imagine a line of almost 10,000 stuffed shopping carts. End to end, that would stretch 5.2 miles—so from the Help Center to out past Wal-Mart.

That’s an amazing accomplishment but is not even what Iman is proudest of when talking about the role the Help Center plays. The biggest impact, and the kind of changes he has been the proudest of during his six years, is the way the Center is able to give people back some of their dignity and to help them back toward sustainability. 

“People have an image,” he explained, “that because they are struggling to provide for their family, that they are “less than” or “second-class” in some way. Allowing them to come in and make choices about what their family needs, and to feel the respect and compassion that the workers and volunteers show them, helps them see their worth more fairly.”

When asked if there was one thing he would like people to know about the Help Center and its programs, he shared two. The first is that often the people working and volunteering at the center get more benefit from it than the participants coming in. That’s true whether it’s high-school and middle-school students, people fulfilling their community service requirements, or any of the other kind souls who give their time and energy to lift others. 

The second is that the center is really, “for anyone and everyone.” Sometimes the public might picture that it is just for the people stuck in a cycle of poverty, but, in fact, Iman explained, “only 10-12% of the participants are coming through month after month. Mostly it is people and families going through a short period of economic downturn, and they just need a hand to get them back on track.”

To learn more, to get help, or to give help and support, visit www.mexicohelpcenter.org