Project Hope's mission

Denis Rigdon started coordinating faith-based mentoring programs with congregations through Project Hope in 2000. Most of the people being helped have some kind of physical or mental disability or addiction.

More than 60 churches throughout the region are part of the network, although not all have active mentoring programs operating. Cape First Church is mentoring 300 people right now. Christ Church of the Heartland has 25 teams working with this population, many of them in the Hispanic community.

Rigdon, the executive operating officer of Project Hope, recalls that the patriarch of the family that now owns seven El Torero restaurants came to him many years ago for help getting a baby bed. "Our community will bend over backwards to help people who want to achieve," Rigdon said.

He estimates Project Hope's success rate is 25 or 30 percent. "These are people who have failed over and over. But they've gotten back their lives."

Project Hope is known throughout Southeast Missouri for helping people acquire donated vehicles that enable them to have a job. More than 200 families, individuals and community organizations now have a vehicle thanks to Project Hope.

Rigdon believes in the concept of churches showing people how to live and in helping those people with the problems that are keeping them from being self-sufficient. "We're talking about economic opportunity and life transformation," he said.

-- Sam Blackwell