2 Hands reaches out to help those in need

Jon Bishop drove up Division Street recently with his 8-year-old daughter, Faith.

Faith, who has always been “very empathetic,” her dad says, spotted a young woman sitting on the side of the road with a sleeping bag, looking sad and alone.

Faith, in the back seat, started crying.

Faith wondered how to help that woman, Bishop recalls. She wanted to know where people could go to help other people.

“I said, ‘We’ll figure something out,’ ” Bishop says.

Together, over the last several weeks, the two – along with some help from Faith’s little sister and Bishop’s wife – have created www.2hands.org.

The site aims to connect people who need help with those who want to help.

The site is new and hasn’t received much publicity, so few requests have come in so far, Bishop says. One man asked for and received some firewood, he says.

But Bishop imagines people seeking and offering a variety of helpful things: Money to pay the heating bill. Clothes for a job interview. A job. An apartment.

“It’s just one hand helping another,” Bishop says. “A lot of people reach a point in life where there’s nowhere to turn.”

Bishop, who lives with his family in Mead, calls the site an “assistance portal.” There are other Web sites that connect those that have something with those who need something. Craigslist, for example. Or Freecycle.

But Craigslist is for people who can pay for items and Freecycle is geared more toward helping the environment, rather than giving a helping hand to individual people.

In fact, the moderator of the Spokane Freecycle group recently sent out a message to members, urging them to steer clear of “sob stories” in their posts.

“There are many charities that deal with specifics of helping families and individuals with temporary needs during times of hardship,” the e-mail says. “Even though the side effect of giving items away with no strings attached is that we fulfill needs at times, this is not the reason our group was formed.”

But that is exactly the reason for 2 Hands, Bishop says.

Bishop, who works for Goodrich in Spokane making jet brakes, is working on getting nonprofit status for the organization, he says. He doesn’t want to make any money from the endeavor, but wants to be able to accept donations.

And he’s looking for volunteers to help pass out 2 Hands brochures at social service agencies and other areas around town. He realizes many of the people he’s trying to help won’t be able to log on to the site from the living-room laptops.

And he’s also well aware that some people might try to use the site to take advantage of others. He has posted a disclaimer on the site, saying that 2 Hands “implies absolutely no degree of success” for either party and also assumes no responsibility for anything that might happen in a face-to-face exchange or other encounter arranged through the site.

“I’m not going to stop the site over the chance of (something bad) happening,” he says. “There’s nothing wrong with helping people … It’s an option when people don’t have a lot of options.”