We here at We've Got Time to Help used to talk a lot about hope. Hope for the future. Giving hope to people that have lost it. Hope that times are getting better. Hope that we can make a difference in this world.
It's time to stop hoping. There is no more hope.
I'm sure that you are asking "Why are you giving up on hope"? We're not so much giving up on it up as we are moving on. You see, hope has moved on. Hope has grown. Hope can only grow so big before it becomes knowledge.
To look at it another way, let's use "hope" in a sentence. You might say "I sure hope my team wins this game." But, you can only hold on to hope for so long. You can only hope for as long as the game lasts. After your team wins, you don't continue to say "I sure hope my team wins this game." What you start to say is "My team won"! Why? Because hope grew into knowledge. Knowledge that your team won the game.
It's kind of the same for us. Almost two years ago we started We've Got Time to Help and saying to each other, "I sure hope we can help a few people." After a few months and many projects, our sentences became "I hope that we can help more people. I hope that maybe we can even open another WGTTH chapter in Oregon." After many more months and many more projects we would say "I hope we can open chapters in other states!"
Now, thanks to the hard work of thousands of volunteers all over the country and all of the help from The Huffington Post, we now say "How long before we can open that chapter in Ireland?" Or, "What's the timeline on the New York chapter?" You see, because hope is gone. We no longer hope that we can help people; we know we can. We no longer hope that we can open new chapters in new cities; we know we can. We no longer hope that we can change the world... well, you get the idea.
So yes, it's time to stop hoping. It's time to realize that hope has grown into something much more wonderful. Something much more concrete. Knowledge that we can make a difference. Knowledge that we all have a say in what happens next. Hope has grown into knowledge, and knowledge into action. It's no longer a "what if" it's a "when."
As we said earlier, you don't keep hoping your team wins the game even after the game is over. We no longer hope we can win. As soon as we started getting calls and emails from every state in the union wanting to start WGTTH in their area, as soon as we started getting calls from other countries wanting to start chapters, as soon as we received hundreds upon hundreds of emails, tweets, and Facebook posts from people asking what they could do to help, we knew that we had won the game.