When a person owns a business they have different methods they can use to measure success. When running a non profit the methods of measuring success are different for each organization depending on the mission. At A Parent Speaks, an organization that provides support for families with children that have special needs we recently reached a true milestone which in the area of our service can certainly be used to measure success.

Fifteen months ago A Parent Speaks added a new program, a Chizuk Hotiline, a number for parents and family members of special children to call anytime day or night when they need someone to talk to, the phone line began ringing as soon as it was advertised and last week we logged our seven thousandth call. That is measurable success, that is the service we laid out in our mission to Klal Yisroel, to the families that are housing the special neshamas that hashem has sent down.

We have been on a fast moving train for almost two years. It’s really unbelievable from the time we made the decision to turn this idea into an organization we have been moving at lightning speed. Constantly working on new programs, new support ideas and new ways to reach out to families that have children with special needs. I thought that as a parent of a special child I had seen everything, but in reality I see new things every day. I see things that people think you only read about, things that you would think don’t exsist in our backyard and that is a part of the problem when it comes to support. Each person has the ability to support another but in order to do that we need to open our eyes and become aware of what is going on in the families of our friends and relatives.

If you would have told me last year that by this time we would have logged over seven thousand calls on our hotline I likely would have doubted it but our hotline rings all the time, people have an address they know where to go for support, they know where to go when they need someone to talk to. 

It is not just the number of calls that we have taken that confirms to me that this was indeed a good idea but the types of calls. We are turning lives around, saving families; helping siblings and letting Bubbie know that having her special grandchild over for Yom Tov is going to be OK. I have personally seen over fifteen hundred kids entertained at our events over the last eight months, this is measurable, this is what we are all about. Seeing a family go from a 3:00 AM crisis call to dancing at our Purim Chagiga, I know we are on the right track. My hope is that with Hashems help we will continue to reach all the families around the globe that need our assistance.

A Parent Speaks can be contacted at 1-877-99-PARENT or [email protected]. Their website is www.aparentspeaks.org.

(Chaim Spero – YWN)