'$28K in 28 Days'
JOEL MARTIN | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 8 months, 1 week AGO
Dawn Prince stands in the coat closet at His Helping Hands in 2024. The ministry is within $28,000 of being able to install a kitchen to serve free daily meals.
FILE PHOTO
With help from the Columbia Basin Foundation, His Helping Hands was able to begin offering self-service laundry to those in need.
Joel Martin has been with the Columbia Basin Herald for more than 25 years in a variety of roles and is the most-tenured employee in the building. Martin is a married father of eight and enjoys spending time with his children and his wife, Christina. He is passionate about the paper’s mission of informing the people of the Columbia Basin because he knows it is important to record the history of the communities the publication serves. | February 6, 2026 4:00 AM
EPHRATA — For $28, you can buy a couple days’ worth of groceries, two or three fast food lunches or maybe a respectable bottle of wine. But if 1,000 people chip in $28, His Helping Hands can have its own kitchen.
At the beginning of the month, the Columbia Basin Foundation kicked off its 28K in 28 Days campaign, encouraging Basin residents to chip in $28 each to support the nonprofit.
“We need $200,000 … and my goal was to get all of it by March 1,” said Corinne Isaak, executive director of the Columbia Basin Foundation. “I just felt that we needed to get to the finish line. Out of that $200,000 that we needed to raise over the wintertime, we're down to $28,000. We want to put an all-call out to community members so that they understand the project and His Helping Hands, and then they can be a part of something for $28.”
“We had not really gone out to the community (before) because we’ve been applying for grants, and we’ve been working with corporate donors and some larger private donors,” Isaak said. “But it was time because some people drive by and they go ‘What’s going on in there?’ So, we need to have support from the community to get to the finish line.”
His Helping Hands started out in 2011 helping people in need with warm coats and a Christmas dinner, and in November 2024 they moved into half of the former Grant County Journal building, with Crossroads Pregnancy Resource Center on the other side. The Columbia Basin Foundation was instrumental in adapting the building for both organizations.
“We received some large ARPA grants for nonprofits to renovate the building,” Isaak said. “Our first phase was the Crossroads side … And then our second phase was to get the entry, the laundry, the coat closet, everything done for His Helping Hands. We finished that utilizing grants, and the third phase is to create the industrial kitchen and gathering room.”
His Helping Hands offers winter clothing, sleeping bags and hygiene packs for people in need November through February, as well as showers and laundry facilities and a once-a-month free lunch. The planned kitchen and gathering room will let the volunteers serve a free meal to the public every day, said His Helping Hands founder Dawn Prince.
“We couldn’t do a commercial kitchen because the price was astronomical for that,” Prince said. “We are able to do a full kitchen with residential appliances that will meet all the standards to be able to serve meals to the public.”
The new space will seat 35 people, even while the rest of the center’s operations are going on, Prince said.
“We (will) have the ability to make to-go meals, (for when) people have got their kids and they’re not necessarily going to want to sit down and have a meal, but they’ll take it to go,” Prince said.
The campaign will run through March 1 online, and received a handful of donations as of Thursday. Donors can visit www.cbfcommunity.org or scan the QR code.
“If everybody does a little, we gain a lot,” Isaak said.
With help from the Columbia Basin Foundation, His Helping Hands was able to begin offering self-service laundry to those in need.ARTICLES BY JOEL MARTIN
Endless battle
Noxious Weed Control Board works to keep invasive plants under control
MOSES LAKE — Some of the nastiest plants in Grant County were the topic of a class led by Jay Johnson, a consultant with the Grant County Noxious Weed Control Board, Tuesday. The Noxious Weed Control Board, as its name would suggest, is tasked with keeping weeds under control in Grant County. That’s not a small job; the board’s website lists 129 species of noxious weeds that are found around Grant County. A noxious weed is defined as an invasive, non-native plant that threatens agricultural crops, local ecosystems or fish and wildlife habitat, according to the Noxious Weed Control Board. Washington state law requires that these weeds be identified and their spread kept to a minimum, if not completely eradicated. “We’re one of those agencies a lot of people don’t really understand,” Johnson said. “We’re a county office and … our funding is tax-based assessment. When you get your tax bill and you look down at all the expenses that you pay for, there we are.”
BASIN EVENTS: Oct. 16-24
COLUMBIA BASIN — Whether you feel like shopping, crafting, learning or seeing a show, there’s something happening for you this week in the Basin. Oct. 16 ‘My Family (Mi Familia)’ screening Spanning three generations, “My Family (Mi Familia)” is a heartfelt drama that follows the Sánchez family as they build their lives in East Los Angeles. Through love, hardship, triumph, and sacrifice, the film explores the immigrant experience, the strength of family bonds, and the traditions that connect one generation to the next. Lowrider show and taco truck before the screening. Sponsored by Columbia Basin Allied Arts, EDUBS C/S and the Moses Lake Creative District. $12 per person. Doors open at 6 p.m., film begins at 7 p.m. at the Moses Lake Civic Center Auditorium, 401 S. Balsam St. Tickets and info: www.cba-arts.org.
Moses Lake author encourages women to look beyond church culture norms
MOSES LAKE — A Moses Lake author’s book, “A Christian Woman Striving to Live Her Faith in a Man-Controlled World,” takes aim at the role to which many churches relegate the female half of their congregations. “It’s to encourage women in the faith,” Linda Curran said. “A lot of churches say, ‘Teach Sunday school, do this, do that, but don’t (evangelize.)’" In her book, Curran recounts a time when she moved to a new community and joined a church there. She was surprised to learn that, as a new female member, she had been automatically assigned church cleaning duties. When she questioned it, she wrote, she was met with condescension and her objections were brushed aside. In other churches, she said, women who were capable of teaching were relegated to “women’s ministry.”