Mary Beth Jenssen and Joy Sylvester of COTS represent their organization. (Photo by Susan Bourque)

By Alyssa Hoffman
Fact Checker

The process of elimination began weeks ago with 18 applications applying for the $10,000 grant from St. Michael’s Fix-it-with-Five committee. Finally, after narrowing down their prospects to three final applicants, Fix-it-with-Five grew one step closer to the winner of the decided final vote.

The panelists speak

On Feb. 4 at 7 p.m. St. Michael’s Fix-it-with-Five program hosted a panel at the McCarthy Arts Center. The final three applicants, Spectrum Youth Family Services, COTS, and Neighborkeepers, each delivered a ten-minute speech explaining their organization’s mission and why their program deserves the $10,000 grant.

 “Maybe we are too small for this space; it was optimistic thinking,” founder and chair of the Fix-it-with-Five committee senior Eric Larkin said.

Larkin’s 18-member audience huddled in the first two rows of seats as he described Fix-it-with-Five’s mission of creating permanent sustainable change in order to get to the root of a poverty-related issue. The Fix-it-with-Five committee followed through a process of narrowing down to organizations directly connected to their mission.

Mark Redmond, director of Spectrum Youth, began the evening with a three-minute film on Spectrum’s objectives to save teenagers driven to homelessness by neglected childhoods.

“It’s a continuum; not how to get you off the streets for the night but how can we put a plan together so you’re going to live self-sufficiently for the rest of your life,” Redmond said.

Hal Colston, Joy Sylvester, Mary Beth Jenssen and Mark Redmond answer the audience's questions. (Photo by Susan Bourque)

Mary Beth Jenssen, COTS’ event coordinator and Joy Sylvester, the Housing Resource Center director of COTS, followed Redmond’s presentation with a slideshow of Burlington shelters that provide resources for homeless families. Although COTS does provide shelter, its main objective is homeless prevention.

“We want to catch families, individuals, before they come to our shelters,” Jenssen said.

The Housing Resource Center (HRC) sets up individual programs to keep families in their homes by giving out strategic grants.

“There are sustainable requirements around that so we are not just giving out money and two months later, they’re still at our shelters,” Sylvester said.

Finally, Hal Colston introduced his organization, Neighborkeepers, along with Adok Label, the health outreach coordinator.

“We mainly serve single moms with kids,” Colston said. “I always wonder how will young kids ever imagine their future story if all they knew is poverty.”

Neighborkeepers works through AmeriCorps to invite new-American families from countries such as Somalia and Sudan into the community. Colston and his staff strive to incorporate healthy living habits into the homes of families uniformed of stress-related chronic diseases with programs such as Cooking for Life.

Plans for improvement

For all of the groups, the withering of the recession has created limitations on each organization’s objectives.

With the $10,000 grant, Redmond said the money—and all other incoming donations—will be put towards building a second Single Room Occupancy (SRO). Spectrum’s SRO program allows teenagers who have progressed through the program to live in their own apartment based on a financial plan and according to monthly income.

“Last year we had to turn away kids 140 times,” Redmond said. “With the recession, the number of homeless youth has gone through the roof.”

Currently, COTS has two family shelters, one individual shelter, and two emergency overflow shelters that are temporary. This is their second winter of having them, and only allowed one more, said Jenssen.

The HRC receives money from the federal government and uses this money and donations from other private monies for grants between $800 and $1,000 for the community. Money granted by the federal government includes limitations—where many struggling families fall in between the cracks.

Sylvester said COTS would be able focus on the families that don’t fit into the margins that the federal funding permits.

The families Colston has begun working with have been here for 2-3 years. Since they had no understanding of how detrimental eating the wrong foods can be to one’s health, their children have become pre-diabetic. Constructing a community garden with the grant will provide nutritional balance and lay out a path to the family’s healthier lifestyle, he said.

The turnout for the panel was smaller than Larkin expected. (Photo by Susan Bourque)

“This grant of 10,000 will allow us to continue to teach people to work, to understand that they can be in the driver’s seat and make different choices around their health, nutrition and well-being,” Colston said.

Final thoughts

Throughout a question and answer segment, the members of the audience asked how St. Michael’s could relate and work within each organization as well as how each program reached out to the Burlington community.

Each organization agreed that any type of volunteer work of preparing meals, acting as mentors or organizing food and clothing drives were opportunities for St. Michael’s to continue to actively participate in.

“I wish more people would come,” said senior Faith Saville. “It’s not like you’re donating $5 to a national fund—it’s to families right down the street from you.”

Sophomore and committee member Lauren Fish recognized that her classmates have other things to do and it is their own decisions whether to attend. Agreeing with the other Fix-it-with-Fix committee members, deciding on one organization will be hard, she said.

Students will be able to vote electronically from their computers as well as in Alliot from Wed. Feb. 10 to Feb. 12 for the organization that deserves the $10,000.