As you may know, each year the Hampshire County Community Foundation hosts an annual event to highlight and celebrate local individuals who give so much of themselves to make their communities a better place. They go the extra mile because they are committed to doing what’s needed to make the lives of those around them better. We call the event the Spirit of Giving and it typically takes place in November. It’s an uplifting and inspiring event that showcases just a few of these remarkable individuals.
This year the event has been cancelled, as have most in-person gatherings. But our board still wanted to recognize and celebrate this “spirit”, especially during this exceptionally challenging year when we’ve seen it manifested in every segment of the community.
We’ve all witnessed countless examples of individuals, organizations, businesses, and so on, rising to the challenge of navigating unchartered territory, and doing so with compassion and perseverance, driven by the ultimate goal of helping our community through this crisis. We’re calling them…to borrow a term that’s used frequently now…COVID Heroes.
And so this year, in celebration of the Giving Spirit, we recognize and applaud all of our COVID Heroes. Hampshire County is so fortunate to have so many COVID Heroes, but we simply can’t personally recognize them all. So, we asked our Facebook community to share with us who their COVID Heroes are, and from there our board selected five to be named our 2020 Spirit of Giving honorees.
We very much regret that we can’t congratulate and say thanks to our honorees with the usual fanfare that a large gathering affords, but hope that the presentations we’re doing individually this week will still carry the same message of sincere appreciation and gratitude. The efforts of our honorees, and the many other Heroes in our community, weave and bind together the fabric of our community and make it stronger. Your leadership, vitality and resiliency are what so many of us rely on to see us through uncertain times.