Hope Week celebrates a decade of bringing goodness to the Illinois Valley

A light in the darkness.

That is how Volunteer and Project Director Mark Schneider, of Peru, describes Hope Week — a full week of Christian volunteer projects created to benefit the community.

“It helps overcome those feelings of despair or depression and just know that no matter your current circumstance, it’s not what’s going to ultimately define where you end up,” he said.

Ax Church Lead Pastor Cameron Graper said he began Hope Week through the church in La Salle in 2015. Since its inception, volunteers have come together to enhance and beautify local nonprofits and parks, while also making some locations more ADA accessible.

Graper said the goal of Hope Week is simple – bring goodness to the community.

“The whole idea behind Hope Week is that feeling something good is going to happen,” he said. “And we feel like that’s missing in a lot of the communities— but definitely in the Illinois Valley.”

Hope Week goes through June 7.

In total, Hope Week has completed over 16,000 hours of community service hours and about $185,000 in projects. This year, on the first day volunteers completed a record breaking 730.75 hours the first day in multiple cities including La Salle, Peru and Princeton. Volunteers will spend $35,000 on project materials throughout the week.

Some Hope Week projects this year include constructing mobility ramps, landscaping, painting playground equipment and park clean-ups in many towns across multiple counties including Bureau, Putnam and La Salle.

Hope Week Special Team Director, Ryan Harris said it’s rewarding to put his faith into action by improving the community. His favorite project, this year, has been building raised garden beds.

“I think it’s a really cool project,” he said. “Because we are making gardening easier for them.”

Graper said he’s thrilled with what his church has been able to accomplish over the last decade and is looking to expand it further by possibly setting up hubs of operation in Mendota, Princeton, Ottawa, Streator and Henry.

The church runs everything out of its central hub in La Salle, he said. Therefore, during Hope Week, when they run a lot of projects simultaneously, they may have projects an hour and a half from each other.

Graper’s second goal is to expand on the projects they’ve been able to accomplish. Or, in other words, be able to do something ridiculously generous.

“My prayer is that by the time we get to year 20 there would be opportunities where we could be rebuilding entire parks,” he said. “Like we would have tens of thousands of dollars to just pour into one community and just completely restore it.”

When asked about the legacy of Hope Week, Graper said it doesn’t matter to him if residents or visitors of the Illinois Valley understand how it began — but the faint scent of hope in the valley is recognizable.

“My prayer is that someday people are going to comment that there’s a strange, unique level of hopefulness in the Illinois Valley,” he said.

If you’re interested in joining Hope Week or looking for assistance with a project visit https://hopeweek.online/. You can also follow Hope Week on social media, where they post daily recap videos with their projects of the day on Instagram and Facebook.