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By Rich Sanders

As the leaders of Caring and Sharing of South Walton County, Carly Barnes and Dani Aylsworth take care of the poor and needy in our community every single day!

Dani was kind enough to take me on a tour of the building across the street from Caring & Sharing’s main facility in Santa Rosa to scout a location for us to record our podcast the week before Christmas.  We found a room upstairs away from the busy distribution activities downstairs. At that time, early on a Tuesday morning, the quiet upstairs room was full of cloth bags to be distributed to more than 700 children as part of the Angel Tree program: literally hundreds of bags covered the floor. Dani and I agreed that it would make a terrific backdrop for our podcast.

When I returned 48 hours later to set up our equipment, I was stunned to find that the room was completely empty!

That single instance demonstrates the strong demand for assistance, as well as the capacity to meet that need that its staff and volunteers provide to people from all over Walton County.  Carly painted a broad picture of those services: “We provide crisis relief through food, financial assistance (which is past due rent or past due utilities), counseling, case management, and connection to area resources.”

As a social worker, Dani works directly with families in need to connect them to those resources and provide encouragement to them.  She literally shines the light of Christ to people in some of their darkest hours!  As she meets with families, “So you build a relationship, but it’s not only connecting them to resources, it’s helping people empower themselves to start taking control of their own lives.”

Caring and Sharing tracks the number of families that it serves every month, and Carly delivered some surprising and disheartening news in our discussion that day: “We are ending the year serving 1,100 families, and that’s the most we have ever served.”

Support comes from all over the community: locals get it!  Carly echoes the sentiment of so many other non-profit leaders on the Emerald Coast: “We live in the most generous community that I’ve ever experienced. I cannot imagine doing this work anywhere else. When I say the majority of churches give to us monthly,  that is not an exaggeration. They are just as invested in this work as anybody else, which is really special.”

With grand plans to renovate the building where we met and increase the services that it provides, we can all donate our time, talent and treasure to Caring and Sharing to help those in need!

Carly and Dani recently appeared on the Christian Capitalist podcast, and you can listen to the entire episode on SOWAL Life’s website.  We are excited to share inspirational stories of hard work and generous giving to the poor and needy in the name of Jesus Christ, like Carly Barnes and Dani Aylsworth!

Rich Sanders is a pastor, small business owner, retired healthcare attorney and adjunct professor at Emory University, and former intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy,  He and his wife, Rebekah, met at church in 1996, have been blessed with three children (James, William and Caroline) and live in Destin with their large golden retriever, Cowboy.

The post Carly Barnes and Dani Aylsworth: Caring and Sharing for Our Community appeared first on South Walton Life | 30A News, Events and Community Information.

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South Walton Life | 30A News, Events and Community Information