An open letter to the Community from UNC Women's Basketball Coach Sylvia Hatchell
If you are new to the Chapel Hill-Carrboro area community, or even if you have lived here for some time, you may not know about a small but excellent program that helps local families when they can't pay their water bills.
It's called the TASTE OF HOPE program and it is funded with voluntary donations from Orange Water and Sewer Authority (OWASA) customers
Here's how it works: When you sign up as a donor, your monthly water bill is automatically rounded up to the nearest dollar. The added amount becomes your monthly donation, which is turned over to the Inter-Faith Council for Social Service (IFC) to help local families or to WaterPartners International for water projects in developing nations.
Is the Taste of Hope program efficient? You bet! All of the donations go to help people in need—but it will cost you, as a donor, less than a dollar per month. So, being a contributor is simple and painless.
To the families who are able to start or keep water service because of your donations, the Taste of Hope program makes a huge difference. Can you imagine what it would be like to be without water—to be unable to bathe, wash dishes and clothes, and flush the toilet?
About 1,000 of the 19,000 OWASA customers have signed up as Taste of Hope donors. Why isn't this program more well-known? Because OWASA is a non-profit agency and it does not use its normal revenues from customers to promote or to fund the Taste of Hope initiative.
How many local families get temporary help from Taste of Hope? Not nearly enough. The IFC can assist only about 200 households a year with the annual donations totaling about $6,000.The need is much greater because current economic conditions make it hard for many working families to keep up with the rising costs of fuel, health care and other necessities, especially in the winter.
Please join me in supporting the Taste of Hope assistance program. To sign up or get more information, please call OWASA at 968-4421 or visit the OWASA Website, www.owasa.org.
Yours truly,
Sylvia R. Hatchell, Head Coach
Women's Basketball Team, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
P.S.: If you are not an OWASA customer and you want to contribute to Taste of Hope, you are invited to send a donation directly to the Inter-Faith Council at 110 West Main Street, Carrboro, NC 27510.