In honor of National Philanthropy Week, we are pleased to spotlight Itero Group employee Tim Bojko, who is an avid volunteer in his community. Read below for more about Tim’s commitment to his community. Thank you for making a difference, Tim!
Can you share with us how you are involved in your community?
There are many activities I’m involved with, ranging from volunteering with non-political government sub-committees to distributing food every month to those in need. With the food outreaches I perform multiple roles, ranging from packaging and sorting the food, to loading the vehicles of those in need with the food, to doing traffic control. As for the non-political government sub-committees, I help the city understand the needs in our community and ensure they are planning effectively to build better, stronger communities. When I’m visiting my in-laws in the Pacific Northwest, I volunteer feeding hot meals every week in the State of Washington. My daughters got involved because they wanted to help. I never asked them to help, but they just asked if there could come along a few years ago and they come along every time. Of course, my wife is involved as well, and we all help with packing food and loading it into the cars. In the past I volunteered as a personal finance coach for ten years leading classes and doing one-on-one coaching as well. The classes were nine weeks long and over that time the average family paid down $10,000 in debt while saving $3,000.
Why is this important to you and why are you dedicated to these efforts?
I grew up in a family were we always volunteered. As far as I can remember, I’ve been serving in soup kitchens and many other types of community service my entire life. I do this because every individual is valuable, precious, and is a winner in life, even if it may not look that way now. Everywhere we look there are hurting people, and they need love, compassion, encouragement, and guidance to help them win in life. I’ve realized that every single decision I make impacts not only my community today, but it will impact the generations to come and so I want to do my part to help make a strong community of individuals that are winners who serve and love one another.
What do you hope to change or impact the most?
I hope that every individual I encounter will understand how loved and valuable they are to myself, my family, and the community. Every individual has a divine destiny to accomplish, but hardships, distractions, bad decisions take you from that discovery in that destiny. I hope with everything that I’m involved with it will help realign individuals to discover and fulfill that divine destiny. We distribute about 25,000-30,000 lbs of food each month to an average of 200 families (800-900 individuals) every month. The organization I serve in Washington serves approximately 140 hot meals every week when I’m visiting my in-laws.
Anything else you’d like us to know about you or your community involvement?
Serving the community starts in the home with serving my children and my wife. This is the most important part of my serving as it will have the greatest impact for generations to come.