Almost three years ago in 2005, the church I was attending decided it wanted a website. The pastor knew that I enjoyed playing around on my computer at home and had done a bit of programming, and he asked my wife if I knew anything about website development.

Up until that time I had resisted learning anything about website design, but, I decided to try my hand at it. (Of course, some people looking at the websites I have done might think that I am still resisting learning anything about website design.)

I bought a copy of Microsoft's FrontPage, started reading a book, and began designing my first site.

One of the things I wanted to do was to put links on the church's site to the ministries/service agencies it supports. I googled the agencies -- Helping Hands Homeless Shelter and Kumler Neighborhood Ministries are the two for which I remember looking -- but didn't find anything. I learned later that Helping Hands did have a website, but I either wasn't googling right or it wasn't listed at the time.

I decided that after finishing the church's website, I would contact the agencies and see if they were interested in me doing websites for them.

Helping Hands and Kumler were the first two sites that I did in addition to the church website. Several have been added to the list since then.

I have to admit that I am not very good, and any time I learn one small new thing, I realize how much there is that I do not yet know. But, the only cost that is passed on to the agencies is the domain name, and that goes straight to the domain registrar; I don't take any type of cut. Most of the sites are hosted as subsites on the Springfield Faith website, but a few agencies have decided to pay for their own hosting accounts.

If you are a human services agency in the central Illinois area, and would like to explore the possibility of having me design and host a website, feel free to email me using the form on the Contact esvb.org page.

This is the short history of esvb.org, but the thing that I like to remind people is that I am just sitting at home having fun on my computer. The people who are really providing a service are those folks at places like Helping Hands, and Kumler, Contact Ministries, P.O.R.A., and the many other groups in town.

All of us can help in some way. Check out the Service Agencies page to find many of the other groups in town that need both volunteers and financial assistance.

Speak Less, Help More

Thank you for reading,

eric scott volkel-barno, esvb.org