WILTON — One never fully knows what a person is going through. Most of the time, a helping hand is all that is needed, or better yet a “kickstart”. Western Maine Community Action [WMCA] has assembled a program that will help those with sustainable and simple needs.
“Say a homeless person finally secures an apartment but doesn’t have a bed or gentleman gets a job after a term of unemployment, but needs tools and steel-toed boots of his own to start, they would be able to make a request,” says Data Manager Danielle Flannery.
The program is “Community Kickstart” [CK], and it is spearheaded by Flannery and Director of Family and Health Services Kobi Perry. Its mission is to provide clients, once per year, with a request for items in times of need.
With a $1500 lifetime limit, Perry and Flannery will take these requests and, once a week, send them to kickstarters to help fill the request. To become a kickstarter, simply contact Perry or Flannery or follow this link to sign up. “It’s literally a name, email, and zip code are all they have to put in. And that’s how they get signed up to be a kickstarter,” Flannery comments.
Households in Franklin County plus those in Livermore and Livermore Falls are eligible.
To qualify for CK, families must be below 200% federal poverty level and submit proof of income to the WMCA. As for the needs, WMCA will only consider needs that are sustainable and completely resolves the need.
Those who apply don’t have to explicitly be clients of WMCA. “They wouldn’t have to become a client, they could call us, and we would do the form with them,” Perry says. “We wouldn’t want people to have to unnecessarily wait.”
The program was inspired by a similar program at Kennebec Valley Community Action Program [KVCAP], led by Development Director Andrea Pasco. The program is called The Greater Waterville Poverty Action Coalition and started in 2015.
“We went to a Community Action Conference last May,” Perry states. “We were interested in it beforehand, because Danielle had signed up to get the emails for that community. So, we went to [Andrea Pasco]’s presentation. And she just really inspired us and our team to get this started.”
WMCA has begun building a community of kickstarters and has seed money to help fund additional needs. According to Flannery, only PayPal and in-person donations can be accepted at this time due to technical issues but hopes to have that resolved in the future.
Monetary donations are also the only donations accepted at this time due to space restrictions. Moving forward, WMCA hopes to expand the program to work with more community partners and establish more avenues for potential kickstarters or clients to apply.
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