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.