CHF Team Member Spotlight: Viola Cage
MEET VIOLA
Viola Cage is our COO and has been serving with the Chris Hope Foundation for the last five years. You often see her bringing gifts and supplies to families and sharing her bright smile with everyone who attends our fundraising and special events.
She is our first “CHF Team Member” feature. Enjoy learning more about Viola!
What is it about our mission that makes you the most excited to be involved?
Viola: My mission in life is to serve and do for others in any way that I can. With the CHF mission, it allows me to do just that – to touch lives, empower families, to give hope in times of hopelessness. When someone’s life is touched, it touches my life as well.
If you could use only one word to describe how it feels when you know a struggling family and a sick child have been helped, what’s your word?
PROUD!
There is such an overwhelming feeling of satisfaction for that moment. Then I wait on the next time.
What is a special CHF moment you remember most?
The year we visited Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital during the holidays and gave or left gift cards with each family on every floor. The appreciation and thankfulness that was shown was priceless.
We like to say this is “our” foundation – the community’s. How would you describe what it’s like to be part of “our” foundation?
It is invigorating, to say the least. The more we do, the more I want to do. I hope we will be around for the rest of our lives.
You’ve been with us for five years now. We’re still a small and growing nonprofit. What do you hope we can accomplish together in five years from now?
Continue to build on what we accomplished the first five years. I want CHF to not only be known locally, but to become known worldwide. How awesome would that be!
Have you ever involved friends or family members in your work with our foundation? What was it like for them to see our work firsthand?
I have involved family and friends by recruiting them to volunteer on occasions and by sharing with them all the good things CHF has done and is planning to do. This often prompts them to make a donation to help us continue our mission.
Tell us a little more about you. When you’re not working with CHF, how do you spend your time?
I am very much involved at my church (although we’re not physically meeting at this time). I have a knack for graphics, so I spend time helping the church with its virtual worship experience, making it to be more attractive.
I love to cook and eat, so I spend time experimenting with new recipes that I find while reading various magazines and watching the Food Network.
Because I love beauty, I enjoy planting flowers for each season.