WE HAVE LITTLE TIME: LET’S BE PURPOSEFUL
A Point-in-Time Count Reflection
Photo taken by Peter Safir
Are we as busy as we think we are? Some of us may think we have time to devote to the things we love, however, when you dig into the scheduler, it’s easy to see how many opportunities we miss to do the things we cherish the most.
It is hard to be too critical though, we are only human.
Even avoiding snooze buttons and calendar reminders, we end up forced to put some things off for another time. How many times can we put things off until they become something that never gets done?
THE GIFT OF TIME
If we want to ensure we are able to impact our community, we have to force ourselves to start making changes today. If we are lucky enough, we get the chance to make changes and still feel like we are getting fantastic things accomplished within our limited schedule. In a previous Building Bridges Blog Post, Courtney Morton mentions the “Gift Of Time“, which is a perfect metaphor for the importance of making time for the things we want to do instead of the things we do to get by.
Having just had a daughter this past year, I understand more than ever how important our community building activities, like the Point-in-Time (PIT) Count, is to our children’s future.
It seems cliche to say it but I have no clue what I did before she was born, nor do I know what life will be like in 5 to 10 years when our community really starts to affect her personal growth in a material way. It was only this year, after serving for the last 4 years as a leader for my own group in the PIT Count that I started to understand how meaningful this event would be to her future. To be able to say she lives in a community that has little to no homelessness due to our opportunity for housing allows every person a chance to create the future they deserve. What a fantastic lesson for my daughter, and anyone else that cares enough to give the gift of time to end and prevent homelessness!
TECHNOLOGY GIVES BACK TIME
This year, we used a new mobile application in the PIT Count that made it easy to keep track of the data we were collecting. The app is called the Counting Us App and you can find out more information here. In fact, one of my teammates left a man’s birth date out of the survey and even though he was planning on going back to fill it out at the end, the internal administrators had already sent him a text message making sure to remind him to collect it. Wow! So proactive! Using technology in this ways helps to streamline the process for everyone – volunteers and people experiencing homelessness – and helps people working with the data to spend more time on analyzing the results.
SO, WHAT?
Being a Charlotte native, I have wanted to help our community in every way I could for as long as I can remember. In fact, a friend of mine and I started Serve Charlotte’s Homeless close to 7 years ago. I have always found it fun to spend time cooking food and serving my neighbors a warm meal.
But, I never quite realized the gift they were giving me, by giving me their time.
I am extremely proud to be a part of the Point-in-Time Count for the past four years in Charlotte. Each year I have seen and felt the powerful gift of time by serving alongside a group of amazing people and meeting others in my community I might never have had the chance to meet otherwise. My hope is that all of us can work to ensure that everyone-including the people we count once a year-feel that their community loves them, too.
David Levine is native to Charlotte and loves everything to do with this city. He is a community developer and serial entrepreneur in which his professional experience can be tied to software development, venture investing, business incubation and consulting. If you would like to learn more about him, check out his LinkedIn or any one of his companies or volunteer opportunity websites: RevMax, Early Incubator, Integrateideas, BuzzyDoc, Levine Hearing, Serve Charlotte’s Homeless, and more.
