Boothbay Region Community Resource Council's mission is to serve vulnerable people and position them to become self-sufficient.

“That’s really it in a nutshell,” said Executive Director Katie Spencer White.

Southport passed BRCRC's request for $2,000 in support. Requests from Boothbay and Boothbay Harbor for $6,000 and $5,000 respectively will come to a vote in the coming weeks. With budget season coming to an end, BRCRC is among nonprofits sharing their merits as they make their cases.

For every dollar from Boothbay and Boothbay Harbor, BRCRC applies nearly $8 worth of resources, said White. Some of that is financial and some is one-on-one counseling with the program’s navigators, but “that time is valuable,” White said.

“Being able to call somebody up and say ‘Help me figure out how I transition my loved one into a nursing home because I don't know what that looks like,’ then sitting down to talk for a couple of hours? That's worth it's weight.”

Between Boothbay and Boothbay Harbor, BRCRC saw 161 families, including 1,135 hours of one-to-one support with personnel from the Community Navigator Program (CPN) – one of eight programs BRCRC runs, White said.

“Without BRCRC, if somebody is in hard financial times or if they have a question … the only people they can call locally is the town office. The only resource available is general assistance … and your income has to be so low that most people don't qualify for it … Between these two places, where the state will step in, there's this vast sea of most of us who are unsupported. That's where BRCRC steps in.”

CPN is essential to BRCRC – the “ringleaders” and “mistresses of ceremony,” said White. Navigators Kathleen Arabasz and Hannah Corkum are or have been licensed social workers, though their jobs do not require it, said White. “We really draw from a lot of best practices from a lot of helping professions.”

Help from CPN can include finding food assistance, help with substance use, career counseling or training, health insurance, housing, helping connect people with community partners, communicate with healthcare providers or case managers, small grants for living expenses, and coaching in finance and budgeting skills.

The seven other programs are the Woodchucks, Food for Thought, Community Fuel Fund, Set For Success, Free Clothing Closet, Higher Education Initiative, and Addiction Outreach.

By the end of February, the Community Fuel Fund raised $36,300 in fuel working with 63 households across the region. BRCRC is also the local homelessness prevention program in a county with no homeless shelters. From July to February, BRCRC helped prevent 34 households from becoming homeless.

Other programs are less about the numbers and more about ideas. The Free Clothing Closet runs on donations and provides free clothes Wednesday through Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at United Methodist Church in Boothbay Harbor. The Higher Education Initiative helps students under 18 establish a NextGen College Investing Plan Client Direct Series account; BRCRC credits each account with $25 to start.

One program expected to grow is Food for Thought, a food and security program which helps combat hunger, especially among families with children. The program delivers meals for weekends and school holidays. It currently serves 30 local families – 60 children – said White.

However, White said the potential is much greater as Food for Thought served twice as many families this January as last. White attributed this to better outreach and partnership with the schools and other programs. “We think that there are probably 185 families that would qualify for Food for Thought.”

“'People in need.' We don't like to use that language. It's not about helping needy people, it's all about empowering people to be as independent as they can be and helping them be as self-sufficient as possible … It's about giving every person the tools that they need so that they can live life on their own terms.”