FARMINGTON – A young couple with a baby, living in a trailer locally, runs out of oil.

They have no jobs, no driver licenses, no family or friends to call on.

It’s been 48 hours without heat during one of the worst storms of the season.

An open oven door, an electric hibachi cooker and candles provide little heat.

They call a local pastor for help but even the oil company won’t put a truck out in the storm.

Another pastor buys 18 gallons, finds their home, and bleeds their oil line to start the furnace.

Rev. Scott Planting shared this and other true stories of poverty in Maine as he opened the Western Maine Legislative Caucus: Neighbors in Poverty, on Wednesday at the University of Maine at Farmington.

Planting also read an excerpt from Lisa Pohlmann’s “Being Poor in Maine” that partially describes a life of poverty as one where people work at low-wage jobs, where layoffs are always just around the corner, or where they cobble together two or three jobs just to stay afloat. It is a life without financial security. And one that often leads to poor nutrition from buying cheaper foods of lower nutritional value.

Pohlmann, who is associate director of the Maine Center for Economic Policy, shared themes of poverty and some possible solutions at the well-attended breakfast meeting.

Suggestions she shared to help eliminate poverty included more property-tax relief. The Circuit Breaker program, Pohlmann explained, provides refunds for those paying more than 4 percent of their income in property taxes. But, she said, only 42 percent of those eligible currently apply for the refund.

Income-tax relief and protection of programs such as MaineCare were suggestions as well as workforce development and programs such as the Women, Infants and Children’s Nutrition Program and food stamps. An estimated 150,000 Mainers use food stamps, pumping more than $169 million into Maine’s economy last year, she said.

At the state level, she suggested working with legislators because people who are poor are not at the State House vocalizing their needs.

“The one ticket out of poverty is education,” said Gary Perlson of SAD 58, who spoke on the Franklin County Community College Network. While a group has been working 13 years to make a community college a reality, things have really started progressing in just the past 18 months. In northern Franklin County, the area north of Farmington but the size of Rhode Island, he said, within one generation people have gone from fields and farms to technical college classrooms.

Ninety-two percent of the state lives within a 25-mile radius of a community college, but the distance in Franklin County is much greater.

Barriers for attending include cost, distance and culture. While local school districts and adult education programs have been working to overcome the cost and distance issues, cultural differences are the most difficult. Words such as matriculate and registration may mean nothing to parents and students from rural areas, but providing classes prior to the college experience help prepare students for the cultural change to college life and are helping to reconnect the disconnected, he said.

Elder issues are the focus of Keeping Seniors Home, said Janice Daku of Western Maine Community Action who, also presented a talk on her program that provides services to help seniors stay in their own homes longer. Housing, energy and fall prevention are part of the program’s core elements.