It takes a special kind of crazy to do what Jonathan Mc Courtney the founder of âWe Helpedâ and his team of 23 employeeâs managed to sew together. âIt is my goal to bring a smile to peopleâs lips!â the 57 year old ex-marine said in an interview explaining his and his companyâs goals. Since 2017 the 24 head crew helped over three-hundred people with chronical depression back on their feet; and the tendency to go even further is looking better and better with each passing day.
Mc Courtney is a recipient of his own therapy. âI wondered if it made sense to try it out. It worked. I am feeling better than ever. And so does she.â
âSheâ addresses the adult feline who is sitting on his lap, purring loudly while rubbing her head against him while the elderly man smiles contently. The old woman is missing part of her tail and a leg, yet one wouldnât even recognize that considering how happy she appears. âWe Helpedâ specializes on getting people back on the feet who suffer from chronic depression and social anxiety â and all that while also finding pets a forever home. Around ten animal shelters and foster homes work together with the company whose employeeâs all know the feeling of shutting themselves off from society and slowly falling further and further into the hole they dug for themselves. The animals and the coaching that they trained over the past 3 years help a lot.
âCombining two good causes to found something amazing is something I had never expected to actually do in my life.â Mc Courtney explained with a grin as he explains how the pets have the chance to reignite someoneâs will to live. âThese little guys are dependent on us. They are blind, they have a walking disorder, they are missing a limb or an ear. These guys are what we feel like. But we can make them feel better. We can make them feel loved.â
Alexa Rodriguez was one of the first people to try out the service âWe Helpedâ offered. With the help of her coach she worked on keeping the dog she had adopted safe and well. While doing so, she was forced to change her own life. No more waking up at the end of the day, no more staying indoors all of the time. Slowly but surely, Rodriguez felt better about the path she had chosen. Her coach kept her stable and helped her out, weekly or sometimes daily meet-ups with her to make sure she managed and treated the dog well. Nowadays, Rodriguez has a new job and is currently in her third month with a new, healthy relationship.
One of many cases in which the animals help their humans while the humans care for them. However, it is not as rosy as it looks form the outside. âWe are still struggling to find a footing in general. There are no scientific studies, no doctors or anything that will call us an official way of helping those that need it. Due to that the fundingâs we get are slim. We mostly survive off of our patreonâs and donations from both former patients and people from the outside.â Mc Courtney explains and looks solemn as he does so. He seems concerned with the future of his company, knowing that it takes a lot of keeping it going.
âAnd to add to all, there are cases when we fail. Especially during the first patients we struggled with finding the balance between coaching and self-managing. It was a hard way since then. Now it looks better, but there are of course still people that struggle with adapting. And others who refuse to adapt at all.â Mc Courtney goes on to describe how they are forced to take back the pets in those cases, how much strain goes onto them and how much they tend to miss the owners that they have already lost. âThey stay with us afterwards. We managed to bring some of them together with former patients, but we fear that trying to have them form a new bond with another patient could work badly.â
We Helped is struggling. They have visions and ideals to help people in need while helping animals that canât survive without love. They brought many people back on track and they intend to go further, but to do so they too might need help from outside. They have a good cause. The question is how long their cause can live on.