One Vote, Four Good Causes: Help Pick Where 25 for 25 Gives Back

If you follow along online, you've probably seen me talking about 25 for 25 this week. Here's the short version for you, plus the part where I need your help.

This year marks 25 years since I got my real estate license. Instead of making it about me, I set a goal: at least 25 more homes helped home before the year ends. And every one of those closings sends a donation to one Montgomery County cause.

Which cause? That was never going to be my call alone. This career got built one family at a time by the people around me, a lot of them right here in this neighborhood. So I opened it up and asked everyone to nominate the local organizations that matter to them.

People did not hold back. Nominations came in through comments, DMs, texts, and a few phone calls. Four rose to the top, and now the vote goes back to you.

Here are the four on the ballot.

Journey School

Journey School serves students ages 3 to 21 with disabilities and unique learning needs. It gives them the individualized education, the specialized support, and the kind of environment that actually fits how they learn. For a lot of these kids, it's more than a school. It's the first place where they feel understood instead of managed.

The campus has nine classrooms, a sensory room, a therapy gym, and a plan built around each student rather than one plan for everybody. A mother of children with differing abilities founded it in 2019, for a simple reason: the school she wanted for her own kids didn't exist yet, so she built it. It's a 501(c)(3), and tuition only covers part of what it actually costs to educate a student there. Donors bridge the rest, which is what keeps it within reach for families.

Meals on Wheels Montgomery County

Meals on Wheels has been feeding homebound seniors right here since 1973. It's locally run and locally funded, not a branch of anything, so every dollar stays in the county.

Chefs cook in Conroe, and volunteers deliver around 550 hot lunches every weekday to seniors 60 and up, plus veterans of any age who can't shop or cook for themselves. The meal is only half of it. That knock on the door is a safety check, and for many of these seniors it's the only face they'll see all day. More than half of them live alone. They also run ADA buses to medical appointments, send breakfast bags on weekends, and even provide dog and cat food through a program called aniMeals so nobody has to split their own lunch with their pet. There's a waitlist to get on service. That's the part that stays with me.

Sleep in Heavenly Peace

Their motto is the whole mission: no kid sleeps on the floor in our town. The Montgomery County chapter started in 2021 and runs entirely on volunteers.

They build and deliver bunk beds to kids ages 3 to 17 who are sleeping on a floor, a couch, an air mattress, or squeezed into a bed with a parent or sibling. Families apply, and there's no cost to them. Volunteers assemble the frames at a build event one weekend a month, then deliver and set them up in the home the next. Every piece is new. Frame, mattress, sheets, pillow. The kids pick their own bedding, and the pillowcases come with notes and artwork from the volunteers who made them.

Love Fosters Hope

Love Fosters Hope has been working with Montgomery County kids in foster care since 2001. It started with one summer camp for kids ages 7 to 11 and grew from there.

Now there are camps for girls ages 12 to 15, camps for older teens ages 16 to 19 that teach real life skills alongside the fun, and mentors matched one on one with kids ages 12 to 19. Volunteers are trauma trained before they ever meet a camper. They also built a program called The Net for young adults who age out of the system at 18, because that's the moment a lot of these kids lose every adult they had. Kids in foster care move homes an average of seven times. This is the group trying to be the one thing that stays put.

How to vote

Read through the four, pick the one that speaks to you, and go leave the name in the comments on this week's vote post. That post is where the votes are counted, so that's the only spot that counts.

Vote here: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1ErzXfgn4u/

Voting closes Sunday night. I'll announce the winner Monday.

Four good answers. You get one vote. Which one gets it?