FARMINGTON —Though United Way has postponed its traditional Annual Meeting and Campaign Celebration, we have worked to share aspects of it. Our theme these year was ‘Be a Superhero’ and after the year we had, we couldn’t be more honored to see firsthand just how many heroes we have in our community. Campaign year 2019-2020 (starting May 1, 2019 through April 30, 2020) brought so many challenges to our community from the tragic event at LEAP in September, to the current pandemic with its health and economic impacts, and then of course the Pixelle explosion. United Way worked hard to be a resource during these events as well as maintain our existing programs and initiatives. Check out the successes of the year below! Even with all of these challenges, staff, volunteer, board members and the community rallied to helps us reach 98% of our annual campaign goal of $725,000 (which includes cash, grants, goods and services and the value of volunteer service).
• In May last year we delivered over 500 roses to moms in nursing homes and sold an additional 240 dozen roses for moms in our community. Money raised from this event helped us invest in our 18 community partners and Special Projects
• In August we successfully stuffed and handed out over 600 backpacks for area children. These children were able to start the school year with the supplies they needed. We are already starting to plan for this coming Fall.
• In August we had over 300 registrants for our annual COLOR ME UNITED 5k, which was a huge success!
• Throughout the fall we held workshops where we built over 300 insulating window panels for neighbors and one community building to help keep homes warmer during the long cold winter.
• In November we had our Great Charity Auction, raising almost $20,000 for community investments
• We invested over $115,000 in 18 community partners, various Special Project investments, over $25,000 in funding for food, fuel and shelter through The Very Basics Fund, and more than $20,000 in Hope Fund recipients. Our partners are all doing great work in our community, ranging from dental care, meals for seniors, support for abuse survivors literacy, providing food and so much more.
• This tax season (which is still on-going) we prepared over 360 returns and almost 400 State returns for folks in our community with over 20 volunteers!
• We celebrated (virtually) 16 Superhero volunteers (please check out our website for their write ups and photos; www.uwtva.org) and awarded the Gary A. LaGrange Community Impact Award to Katie Hallman for her work with the Mallett Food Pantry, the Emblem Club and so much more!
We are now gearing up for a new year and getting ready to meet new needs. We already have 75 backpack requests for this fall, we know there are more homes to keep warm, more partners to fund, more good work to be done. We look forward to continuing to serve the Greater Franklin County, Livermore and Livermore Falls area. For more information about the United Way and any up-coming events or initiatives, visit www.uwtva.org or visit United Way on Facebook at www.facebook.com/uwtva. Be sure to like United Way on Facebook and follow on Instagram to be kept up-to-speed on up-coming programs and initiatives!