Housing stability for a fatherless family

Supporting families who are coping with loss is a common theme in Partner Family Projects. Perhaps this is because a family can best imagine and sympathize with another family’s devastation.

Even before they had families, Don Buerkle and David Cho were close friends, having been roommates and in each other's wedding parties. After each married and had children, they remained close friends. David Cho worked as a church youth worker, eschewing more financially rewarding professions out of a desire to serve kids in the greater Washington D.C. area.

When Shelbie Cho was six months pregnant with their fifth child, David was diagnosed with liver cancer. The cancer progressed so rapidly that within a couple of months, his condition was pronounced terminal. For a family with little savings and that was expecting another child, the future seemed horribly uncertain: there was even the question of whether the Chos would be able to continuing residing in their house they recently bought to accommodate their large family.

The Buerkle family joined together with other family friends of the Chos to mount a response. Led especially by the Robertsons and Hartleys, the group formed Friends of David and Shelbie Cho. At first, the goal was to provide respite care and practical assistance so that Shelbie and David could concentrate on their farewell process. But the question of their long term prospects was looming. Indeed, when David finally died, their fifth child William Graham (Liam) was born the day before the scheduled funeral.

The families decided to take on the audacious goal of ensuring that Liam and the rest of the Cho children could grow up with some degree of financial and housing stability. They mounted a campaign to retire $500,000 over three mortgages on the family home. Even though they have done very little formal fund-raising up until now, the group has already raised tens of thousands dollars. The group is beginning to organize various events and initiatives to achieve the rest of their goal.

If you would like to help them, find out more about Friends of David and Shelbie Cho.

UPDATE: As of January 2008, the project has raised enough money to pay off the third mortgage entirely and half of the second one.  The project is spawning all sorts of creativity among the participants.  View a video clip from one local Washington D.C. TV news report covering one such effort.

We don't know if they will reach their lofty goal (we at SixSeeds are certainly going to help). But we do know this: the Buerkles and the other families would never have even gotten this far had they tried to help alone. This project embodies the SixSeeds concept: that service and giving happens best when we do it together. So, if you have some audacious hope of your own, your best chance of success probably lies with the families around you. Ask other families to join you -- you'd be surprised at how many are looking for some sort of common mission.