NAHANT — Mission for Hope founder Leighton O’Connor will be making a special appearance at Nahant Village Church on Friday morning to talk to the community about the nonprofit’s efforts to help people struggling with poverty.
In 2018, O’Connor founded Mission for Hope, a nonprofit organization that is committed to providing care and support for those experiencing homelessness. It has since grown into a bustling organization with volunteers uniting in their jeeps to help others all around the country. The organization has been to 46 major cities in the United States.
It was a simple plan — establish a date and time in the city they’d be visiting, and other local volunteers would arrive in their donation-filled Jeeps — but since its inception, the organization has visited areas where homelessness is most prevalent, such as Alaska, San Diego, San Francisco, Skid Row in Los Angeles, Miami, and others.
O’Connor has a lengthy history in advocating for people struggling with poverty and homelessness. His other organization, Good for Hope Inc., helped raise $10,000 in support of its mission to build water wells in Uganda after its “Running and Walking Well 5k” event in June. Proceeds from past races have been used to dig wells in Kenya, Tanzania, Gahanna, and Morocco, according to the organization’s website.
“I’ll be talking about how we got started out, the different trips that we’ve done as an organization, and just kind of explain to people about us and what we’ve been up to,” O’Connor said.
He then explained what he hopes the community takes away from the conversation.
“Homeless people have real struggles — sometimes, there’s this misconception that people think they can be lazy — but that’s not always the case. People have disabilities and can’t work,” O’Connor explained. “It’s about residents learning what they can do to help people.”
