On a spring morning in Cincinnati, dozens of volunteers spread across a widow’s home — staining a deck, planting flowers, washing bedsheets, installing handrails and cleaning rooms that had become difficult for her to manage alone.
The work was practical and ordinary. But for the family who organized it, the day carried another purpose as well: bringing a child one step closer to home.
The volunteers were participating in a project through Both Hands, a Christian nonprofit organization that helps families fund adoptions by serving widows in their local communities.
The ministry is inspired by James 1:27: “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” In response to that call, adoptive families recruit volunteers for service projects with support raised from friends, relatives and businesses through donations.
Once a core team is formed, Both Hands provides templates and tools to guide fundraising efforts like sending letters and sharing a donation page. The team then comes together on project day to serve the widow through hands-on work such as cleaning, landscaping or painting.
Rather than relying on a typical crowdfunding model, Both Hands ensures that all tax-deductible donations go directly toward a family’s adoption expenses, along with matching grants of up to $3,000 and an additional $1,000 to help cover project supply costs for helping the widow.
For founder JT Olson, the mission of Both Hands is deeply personal.
Growing up on a farm in northeast Iowa, Olson was 12 years old when his parents were killed in a car accident while returning home from an anniversary trip. He still remembers his older brother coming downstairs to deliver the news.
“I remember hitting that cold cement floor and crying like any 12-year-old would cry,” he told the Register. “I know what it’s like to be an orphan; to hear those words and wonder what’s going to happen now.”
In the aftermath, Olson and his four siblings faced an uncertain future. He wondered who would care for them — and whether they would stay together.
His aunt and uncle, who already had three young children of their own, ultimately took in all five siblings. “I know what it’s like to have someone come in and say, ‘We got you,’” Olson said.
Years later, Olson and his wife adopted a daughter from China after having four biological children. While serving on the board of a Nashville-area pregnancy center, he participated in a golf fundraiser and sent sponsorship letters to friends and family. One response shifted his thinking.
“A friend from my Bible study scribbled on my letter and said, ‘JT, if you told me you were working on a widow’s house, I might sponsor you. But you’re just golfing,’” Olson recalled.
Not long afterward, another conversation reinforced that idea. A different friend later shared plans to adopt four orphaned siblings from Moldova but said he was overwhelmed by the financial burden. The story stayed with Olson, recalling both his own experience as a child and the critique he had received on his fundraising letter.
Together, those moments strengthened his conviction about pairing fundraising with hands-on service.
He gathered volunteers to repair and landscape a widow’s home in the Nashville area, while local businesses donated supplies and community members sponsored the work.
“I was expecting [to raise] around ten or fifteen thousand dollars,” he said. “We ended up with $70,000. I was just blown away.”
That first project became the foundation for Both Hands.
Since 2008, the organization has completed 1,652 projects across 46 states, raising more than $25 million, serving 1,890 widows and helping fundraise for more than 1,800 adoptions.
For Olson, however, the impact is measured less in number than in moments.
After one project, a widow pulled him aside in tears.
“She told me, ‘Thank you. I thought God had forgotten about me,’” Olson recalled. “’But this just tells he still cares for me. He loves me. He’s providing for me.’”
Experiences like that, Olson noted, reveal something deeper about service itself.
“I just believe there’s a compartment in all our hearts somewhere that’s meant to be dedicated to serving,” he said. “You get a little glimpse of how Christ served us by giving his life at the cross.”
Inviting Community Into Mission
That same spirit of service resonated deeply with Steve and Victoria Cerise, a Catholic couple from Cincinnati who partnered with Both Hands while pursuing adoption after years of infertility and prayerful discernment.
“When I first found Both Hands, I just loved the concept immediately,” Victoria, a Catholic wedding photographer, told the Register. “Being pro-life doesn’t mean just serving babies, and it doesn’t just mean serving the elderly. Being pro-life means serving both.”
After completing their home study with a private adoption agency, the Cerises publicly announced their plans to adopt on March 19, the feast of St. Joseph. Victoria said the foster father of Christ became a particular source of peace and intercession during their discernment.
“There was this overwhelming sense that St. Joseph had our back,” she said. “It was reassuring to know that we had entrusted this process of adoption to him.”
For their Both Hands project, the couple chose to serve “Miss Mary,” a widow who had once opened her home to Victoria for more than two months before the couple’s wedding in 2020.
“We never felt like we fully repaid her generosity,” she said. “Being able to help make her home safer and more comfortable was very meaningful to us.”
Alongside roughly 30 volunteers, the couple spent May 9 landscaping the property, power washing and staining a deck, replacing patio furniture, cleaning the inside of the home, installing a stair rail and improving accessibility features.
The project carried added urgency because Miss Mary is battling leukemia, making the improvements especially important for her health.
In the process, Cerise added, she learned the importance of asking others for help.
“JT told us early on that not asking is basically saying ‘No’ for someone else,” she said. That advice encouraged her to contact businesses she initially assumed would decline. Instead, many responded generously with donations of supplies and equipment, including a new air purifier.
“If God is calling you towards something, he will make a way,” Cerise said. “But you might have to humble yourself enough to ask for help.”
For the Cerises, the project also allowed their broader church community to become part of their future child’s story long before an adoption match occurs.
“We’re not all called to adopt, but we all are called to serve orphans and widows,” Cerise said. “This brings the community together in that mission. It reminds you that you’re not doing this all alone.”
Helping the Wider Community
That sense of accompaniment is something Kimberly Henkel believes many adoptive and foster families often lack.
Along with her husband Greg, Henkel founded Springs of Love, a Catholic ministry dedicated to supporting foster, adoptive and discerning families within parish communities through mentorship, formation and spiritual support.
After experiencing infertility themselves, the Henkels eventually fostered and adopted four children. But she remembers how isolating the journey initially felt.
“I was really discouraged because there was nothing in the Church to help me navigate it,” Kimberly recalled.
Her experience, she said, reflects a broader reality for many families pursuing adoption in the United States. More than 70,000 children are in foster care waiting to be adopted, while adoption costs can range from roughly $40,000 to $85,000 for a private domestic adoption.
A 2025 survey conducted by the National Council for Adoption and Gift of Adoption found that 97% of prospective adoptive parents viewed adoption expenses as a barrier, with nearly half describing the costs as an “extreme barrier.”
For Henkel, ministries like Both Hands and Springs of Love complement one another in responding to both the practical and relational gaps families often face.
“What Both Hands is doing is beautiful because they’re showing that adoption isn’t just about one family,” she said. “It’s about the wider Christian community welcoming a child.”
She added that many Catholics want to support foster care and adoption but often don’t know where to begin.
“Both Hands makes it very easy for couples to ask for support, which is a hard thing to do,” she said. “They help with that financial side, while ministries like Springs of Love center around accompaniment and long-term support in parish communities and chapters.”
For Olson, that same kind of support found in Both Hands — serving widows while rallying community help for adoptive families — also extends to other pro-life needs.
“That’s what I’ve envisioned for Both Hands,” Olson said. “Serving a widow while raising funds for something that saves kids, encourages kids, comforts kids — anything that has to do with helping kids in tough places, just like I once was.”
What began as a single fundraising idea has become, for Olson, a model where a Saturday of work for a widow can also help bring a child one step closer to home.
