In a recent letter to the Scarborough School Board and Town Council, Project GRACE gave a brief overview of some of the ways we are helping students and the schools.
- Milk Money. Project GRACE recently made a $1,100 gift to Scarborough School Nutrition to cover the costs of milks and nurses' office snacks for the last school year. While all students can have a free breakfast and lunch, extra milks are not included. Instead of embarrassing a child who doesn't have the money for milk, nutrition staff just keep a tally and bill us at year end. It's a gift we are pleased to make each year.
- Nutrition Department's "Backpacks" Supplemental Nutrition Program. Last Spring a gift from Saco Biddeford Savings enabled us to add jam/jelly to a surplus of peanut butter, and with help from a Town & Country grant, we did our first school snacks drive just before school started. This fall we made an additional gift of over $500 in staple foods (tuna and tuna helper/rice, salad dressing and condiments, soups, snacks and cocoa packets, etc.) for the 'backpacks' that feed families struggling to put food on the table. Nutrition staff are very caring and put in extra effort to see that kids are well looked after, and with dignity and compassion for all the families. This holiday season we’ll also be donating staples for nutritious meals at home, the ‘fixings’ like stuffing, gravy, squash and seasonal favorites.
- Immediate Needs for Students and Families. Cindy Fasulo, LPN is a Project GRACE board member who helps us liaise with the schools. In addition to access to other resources, Cindy has a "stash" of retail and grocery gift cards that school nurses, counselors, and personnel can request to provide immediate assistance to a family that needs food, personal hygiene supplies, or shoes and clothes for their children. Our volunteers also shop for clothes and essentials for kids as needed when school counselors and social workers contact us directly with a special request. Typically Project GRACE invests at least $3,000 annually through the schools, enabling us to extend our reach discretely to families who might not otherwise contact us.
- Assistance for School Personnel. Sometimes it's not the kids who need our help, but a member of staff - a teacher, custodian, administrator, etc. - who is going through a challenging time. In those cases we often work through an intermediary, like a school principal, to provide extra assistance and confidentially. It may be a 100 gallons of fuel assistance to keep their home warm (regardless of which town the employee calls home); it may be help with transportation to work; it could be respite from a stressful situation; it could be extra groceries or a dinner out with the family. Our help varies as the situation requires because we value the commitment school personnel make to their students, to their school, to the community.
- School Supplies & Backpacks for Students & Schools. Our annual back-to-school campaign to collect sturdy new backpacks and assorted school supplies was enormously successful this year. We helped families who applied directly to us for packs and supplies, were referred through Nutrition or school personnel, etc. We also gave each of the schools a couple of totes of extra supplies for the teachers to use in the classroom or share with students as needed, and dozens of sturdy new backpacks to have on hand for a child who needed one. Supplies and backpacks were donated by many individuals, groups, and businesses (including Infinity Credit Union, Town & Country Federal Credit Union, Abbott, NT&T, Modern Woodmen Fraternal Financial). Community Services, with help from Rebecca MacCallum (aka USOA's "Mrs. Scarborough"), held a series of drives for us. The Scarborough Library accepted donations throughout the campaign, and also hosted our donor drop off and family pick up events at the library just before the start of school. The retail value of the packs and supplies we donated to the schools alone was over $2,200, but the investment from the community in our teachers and students is priceless.
- Advanced Math Calculators. Our neighbors are very quick to share, and are very generous about giving to help a child start the school year ready to succeed. One company in particular, Landry/French, deserves extra recognition this year for their generosity: they made a special appeal for the calculators and it's our great pleasure to pass their gifts to us on to the schools. The High School was given 20 TI-84 advanced math calculators, while the Middle School received 20 TI-30s. We provide the calculators so that a student who has lost or forgotten one can borrow one as needed for homework, a test, or class work. We also invited the math teachers to give calculators to students with exceptional math skills who cannot afford to have a calculator of their own (TI-84s cost more than $100 apiece). The total value of the calculators is an investment of about $2,400 in the academic promise of Scarborough students.
- Community Thanksgiving Dinner. This year will mark the seventh annual Community Thanksgiving Dinner hosted by Chef Peter Esposito and his talented kitchen staff and volunteers. It all started with the energetic conversations at the 2016 Food for Thought & Action Forum, one of a series convened by Project GRACE, that sparked an idea for a community Thanksgiving dinner that has since evolved into a favorite annual tradition for the town, guests, volunteers, co-hosts and supporters. From the outset, Scarborough’s Community Thanksgiving Dinner enjoyed the unstinting and generous gifts of “time, talent, and treasure” from Scarborough Schools, Community Services, Public Safety, the Town of Scarborough - and Project GRACE, too. While we will be stepping back from our multi-faceted role as a co-host and sponsor, we are confident Chef Peter and his team will cook up a delicious traditional holiday dinner with a generous ‘side’ of joy. As is our custom, we’ll make a modest gift of thanks to the kitchen staff, who volunteer their time as well as talent at Thanksgiving.
We appreciate all our supporters who invest in our mission, including these sponsors of our back to school Campaign:
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