92 Pathway of Hope: How it all came to be with Commissioner Carol Seiler

This season, we’re exploring The Salvation Army’s Pathway of Hope—a national initiative to provide individualized services to families with children, addressing their immediate material needs and providing long-term engagement to stop the cycle of poverty.

Last week, we took a deep dive into hope itself to better understand it and what it does psychologically and physiologically, plus how we can find more of it in our own lives.

Hope is part of the namesake of this initiative, the Pathway of Hope. 

And you may be wondering how it all came to be about a decade ago. 

Commissioner Carol Seiler, who retired from The Salvation Army in 2017 as territorial leader in the central U.S., was there at the start.

She takes it all the way back to a question posed to a meeting of The Salvation Army’s leaders: “You’ve served a lot of people,” the advisor said, “but what are you doing to solve the issues?” 

And that question ignited what we now know as Pathway of Hope. 

Now in retirement, she is back at work helping establish the Pathway of Hope in the Northwest region of the U.S.

And as she says, the approach is simply to offer what you would to help a friend. 

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