Giving Matters

Seacoast Family Promise organizes a network of religious congregations to help homeless families. These congregations open their facilities on a rotating basis to provide overnight shelter and meals; at the organizations’s day center, staff help families with the support they need to get back on their feet. Karen and her son came to Seacoast Family Promise for help in 2009.

Karen: We spend our daytimes at the day center and we go to a church in the evening for our evening meal and we spend the night there. We spend seven nights at one church and there’s about twelve churches within the community that help support us. 

Anna: I was teaching maybe a skull lab the other day, and in the middle of the lab one of the little kids turns to his friend and says “This is a lot of fun isn’t it.”

The Montshire Museum of Science is a vibrant center for children -- and adults -- to make discoveries about science and the natural world. Anna Super was three years old when her parents first brought her to the museum. She’s 29 now,  and still fascinated.

Emerge Family Advocates provides a safe, neutral supervised place for child visitation and custody transfer. The Honorable Lawrence MacLeod, a New Hampshire circuit court judge, says that service is beneficial for children and families.

Lawrence: Before this facility existed in our area this had to be undertaken by family members, friends, other people who, for better or for worse, always have or seem to almost always have some kind of stake in the outcome of what’s happening. Or exchanges had to take place at public areas, restaurants or, worse yet, police stations. And so this facility offers a great opportunity to provide that kind very necessary service. 

Riverbend Community Mental Health helped Brian Ross get the proper medication to treat his mental illness, and helped him to get back to work.

Brian: Back in 2006, I was homeless and I was hallucinating I was hearing voices. I wasn’t in touch with reality. I was brought into the stare hospital, and I had been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. We got into a medication regime and they actually released me in November 2006. They were able to set me up with a rooming house so I wouldn’t be homeless. And that was when I first started receiving services from Riverbend. 

At Camp Inter-Actions, blind and visually-impaired children have the opportunity to do all the usual summer-camp things -- like boating and swimming and crafts. And the unusual -- like creating a full-scale choral production.

Camper: I’m absolutely music obsessed, so my favorite camp activity is music. I could do that all day long. I thihnk we do a fantastic job, Duy is a great director.

Duy Bui started there as a junior counselor, went to the Manhattan School of Music, and has gone on to create a choral program at the camp.

Good Bridges, a program of Goodwill Industries of Northern New England, helps women transition from prison back to meaningful participation in their communities. The program pairs mentors with women transitioning from incarceration. April Dunn, a realtor, has been helping Val Fredette make that transition.

April: For a woman coming out of prison they have obstacles that the average person doesn’t have. 

Val: I needed somebody that could show me the right way of doing things and somebody to look up to and really mentor me. 

The Nashua Soup Kitchen and Shelter provides about 1,700 meals each week and operates two homeless shelters. But it also helps people address the root causes of hunger and homelessness -- and to offer the proverbial ounce of prevention. The shelter helped Jackie, who is in recovery from alcoholism, get back to work.

Jackie: The people at the transitional housing program where I live referred me to the Nashua Soup Kitchen and Shelter for assistance with education and vocational goals that I had.  

The Upper Valley Business & Education Partnership makes connections between schools and their wider communities. Tyler Mansfield and Jim Madden met through the Partnership’s “Everybody Wins!” reading mentoring program.

JIM: I’ve always loved to read so it was really just sort of a natural fit to share my love of reading with the students. I guess we both discovered we kind of liked mysteries.

TYLER: But also I like reading fantasy books like "The Lightening Thief" and even a history book like the Greeks and Egypt that’s a lot of fun so I have a pretty big range.

16-year-old Victoria Arlen uses a wheelchair to get around. But before a neurological disorder left her partially paralyzed five years ago, sports were a big part of her life. Then she heard about a sled hockey team organized by Northeast Passage, an organization that specializes in therapeutic recreation and adaptive sports.

The Monadnock Chorus has been sharing song and creating community for more than 50 years. Phyllis Scott joined the chorus in 1972.

PHYLLIS: Wherever I have lived I’ve felt the need to be singing. It’s just very fulfilling to me, it’s a wonderful way to make friends and it’s just part of me that’s all.

I started singing with a choir, or a chorus, when I was ten years old; I really got hooked. You can go and sing and everything that might have bothered you during the day is gone. You’re focused totally on the singing. I’ve been with this chorus such a long time that to me it’s family. Everybody has ups and downs in life and this group is just there for you.

The New Hampshire Preservation Alliance helps to save the places that are central to New Hampshire’s history and identity. The Alliance helped a group of townspeople in Acworth save that town’s historic meetinghouse, which had been a center of community for almost two centuries. The building was named one of New Hampshire’s “Seven to Save” by the Alliance, but was going to cost about $1 million to preserve.

Kathi Bradt was part of the committee that worked to preserve the meetinghouse.

KATHI: Acworth is a tiny town - nine-hundred people, less than nine hundred. The meetinghouse was built in 1821 and it’s right at the head of the town common, next to the town hall and our Primary School.

Joe and Carrie were out of work and had run out of money. They had been living in a motel room with their two young daughters. The Crossroads House homeless shelter has helped them get back on track.

JOE: I was teaching in Maine part-time and suddenly there was no more work. So I said to my wife “let’s see what New Hampshire has - substitute teaching and stuff like that." We lost our place where we were living and we were living in a motel.

Yawa Agbenowossi came to the United States from Togo, in West Africa, as a young child. She discovered the Boys & Girls Club of Manchester when she was in middle school. 

YAWA: Well, before I found the club, I just never took anything into consideration. I was never worried about the future. I found the club by a friend introducing it to me actually. She said that “you can come to the Boys and Girls Club” and soon enough I was coming there every day. They couldn’t keep me away from the club. That’s when I started to change.

The “local foods” movement is a growing trend. In South Tamworth, The Community School has embraced it – serving an open lunch for the community every week at no set charge, made of locally-produced foods. They call the program “Farmers’s Table.”

BETTY: Hi, I’m Betty Alcott from Center Sandwich and we are enjoying the Farmers' Table Thursday lunch. The food is delightful and Kim, the chef this year, is wonderful. We're having beef tacos with all kinds of condiments on the side. We’ve got some beans, and we’ve got rice, and we’ve got salad, and cheese and I understand there is Pumpkin Brule for desert.

Peg Loughran and Margaret Reeser are sharing lunch.

When Bob and Celine Richer decided to retire to New Hampshire, they knew they would need an energy-efficient home to be able to afford the long heating season. Bob contacted the New Hampshire Sustainable Energy Association for help. The Richers’s home is constructed of insulated concrete form with a geothermal and solar heating system.

Bob: The Sustainable Energy Association provided us guidance and encouragement along the way because there were so many things to choose from.