A roofing job in Waldoboro, 2009.
The Community Housing Improvement Project, CHIP Inc., will hold its annual Community Cares Day on Saturday, Sept. 8 from 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. People are asked to please consider volunteering; preregister online at chipinc.org prior to the event or complete the registration form received in the mail recently.
For more information, email communitycaresday@gmail.com or call 677-3450. There are additional documents this year to be read, acknowledged, and signed, so all are informed on best jobsite procedure and safety, and to protect everyone. Walk-ins are welcome at the morning gathering site at the Second Congregational Church in Newcastle. Get there early.
CHIP Inc. needs volunteers of all skill levels, men and women. There are restrictions for those under 18 years of age, so please inquire. Help is always needed with food preparation for work lunches, as well as general volunteers and, of course, those skilled in carpentry, working on roofs, plumbing, electrical, painting, clean-up ground work, crew leaders, and lead carpenters. If one is currently unable to help, please consider making a donation to CHIP Inc. to support this event and its longstanding mission.
For the past 16 years, over 100 volunteers have signed up on average to repair 10-12 homes of neighbors in need in select towns of Lincoln County, but this year the number of volunteers registered is below past years’ levels immediately prior to Community Cares Day.
The late Ruth Ives, of Pemaquid, started CHIP Inc. in 1984, when a couple of families were discovered living in substandard housing: one family in the back of a pickup truck, another in a shack having an earthen soil floor. She approached several churches and addressed the issue by intervening with the combined resources of church and community members — thus CHIP Inc. was born.
Beginning around 1984, Ives coordinated a home-repair outreach ministry program whereby a church youth group from Basking Ridge, N.J. would come to Maine for several weeks in July, staying at The Carpenter’s Boat Shop campus, where Ives resided. The hard-working young people would spread out into surrounding towns in teams with crew leaders and carpenters, working on homes of the low-income clients of CHIP Inc. In 2003, Ives announced she would be stepping down from duties as coordinator. Fortunately, two newly-found friends to CHIP Inc., Mariellen Whalen and Tom Ward, heard of the need to locate a new coordinator and stepped up to the task.
Whalen and Ward tirelessly scoured the countryside mustering up support from all in the local community, learning who were good carpenters and potential crew leaders. They also focused on learning about the clients, the people in need, and substandard housing issues and home repair options. From their efforts then to address the Basking Ridge issue, the program remains an ongoing annual event of CHIP Inc. The added benefit in 2003 was the Community Cares Day concept, which was put into action a few months later in September on the first Saturday following Labor Day.
Ives got to witness Community Cares Day in September 2003. It has been reported that she was overwhelmed and with a great joy that there were 100 or more volunteers that early morning at the registration send-off gathering at the Second Congregational Church. Ives knew all along that by thinking of others in less fortunate circumstances in life, her example encouraged caring people to recognize the privilege to pick up the torch. She passed away in 2006.
