Over 70 community members and 35 high school students participated in the 20th annual Community Cares Day on Saturday, Sept. 9, assisting the Community Housing Improvement Project with work across the county.
Along with volunteers from Stepping Stone Housing Inc., crews completed several projects at 11 Lincoln County households, such as repairing skirting of mobile homes, rebuilding steps, doing yard work, and other activities.
CHIP is a nonprofit organization started in 1984 after Ruth Ives and her associates assisted a neighboring family who had been living in their pickup truck. Since then, CHIP has provided year-round emergency repairs, weatherproofing, and heating to central and eastern Lincoln County residents in need.
The nonprofit created Community Cares Day in 2003 to focus efforts on locals helping neighbors.
At 7 a.m. on Saturday, participants gathered at The Second Congregational Church in Newcastle before dispersing to their various work sites. The work started at 8 a.m. and went through until 4 p.m.
In Whitefield, volunteers replaced the skirting and unusable back exit of the mobile home of Kimberly McKenna. Without repairs to the skirting the home would not have retained warmth this winter.
“My fridge broke, and even if I get a new one, I can’t get it in the house. Now they’ve built stairs for the back door, and I’ll have a fridge,” McKenna said. “I don’t know what I would have done without them – I probably would have lived in my car.”
McKenna had been referred to CHIP by a friend, which, according to organizer Kay Whitner, is usually how people find out about the organization.
Whitner explained that people will often contact CHIP after reaching out to federal programs and not being accepted or finding that there’s too much red tape.
“We provide 100 gallons of propane, heating oil, gas, no questions asked – well, we do ask some questions – but we don’t ask very many questions,” Whitner said.
Whitner also writes to foundations on CHIP’s behalf for grants. Almost all of CHIP’s funding, however, still comes through donations.
Whitner has been an organizer of Community Cares Day for several years. She said the nonprofit sees a lot of repeat volunteers who show up one year and then keep coming back.
“It’s a great group of people. And at the end of the day, you feel like you’ve done something to help,” said Whitner.
Lead carpenter Zack Davis has volunteered with CHIP on and off for many years. This year he led a team who cleaned the gutters, built new steps, and repaired the porch of a house in Damariscotta.
Davis said that selecting which projects to complete on Community Cares Day can be tricky. Volunteer safety is extremely important, and not all requests CHIP receives are suitable.
“We used to do roofing repairs,” he said, “but now we keep volunteers on the ground.”
Urgent projects that can’t be completed on Community Cares Day are taken on by the regular volunteers at CHIP who are on call year-round and have experience with building and repairs.
Community Cares Day volunteers don’t always have prior experience, like the high school students who participate.
Students in Lincoln Academy’s dorm program have participated in Community Cares Day for five years running, which helps them earn mandatory volunteer hours. This year students built window inserts, which will help homes retain heat, for eight houses around the county.
After their work was done, volunteers were treated to free ice cream at Round Top Ice Cream in Damariscotta.
For more information or to donate to CHIP, go to chipinc.org.
