Hinesburg Community Resource Center sponsors vast array of programs

By SCOOTER MACMILLAN

Staff Reporter

Shortly after she moved to Hinesburg, Rachel Kring took her two daughters to a playgroup at the Town Hall.

She saw all the games and activities that were being offered by the Friends of Families. She was captivated by the big open room with lots of games and kids.

“I thought Hinesburg is definitely where I want to be,” she said. “This is a great town.”

Friends of Families is just one of the many programs sponsored by the Hinesburg Community Resource Center.

That playgroup in 2010 was King’s first introduction to the Hinesburg Community Resource Center. A couple of years later, Kring ended up running Friends of Families. For the past two and half years, she has been director of the Resource Center and overseeing all its programs.

One of those programs is the Hinesburg Food Shelf. Since 2012, the Food Shelf and the other Hinesburg Community Resource Center programs have been based in a building at 51 Ballards Corner Road, next to Hinesburg’s Carpenter-Carse Library.

Donated building

The owner of the building, Jan Blomstrann, let the Resource Center rent it for $1 a year. Now, they can save that dollar. Blomstrann has given them the building

Blomstrann was owner of NRG Systems, the wind and solar technology company on Route 116 in Hinesburg which was sold in 2017.

The Resource Center planned a celebration and open house to honor Blomstrann’s generosity in early January, but it was postponed because of the weather. The celebration will be held sometime this spring because Blomstrann is traveling overseas.

Hinesburg Community Resource Center formed in 1986. It started as a clearing house for information in the years before the internet or before people in Vermont who needed help could call 211 to find resources.

For many years, the Resource Center was housed in the United Church, but as its programs expanded and the Food Shelf began to distribute more fresh vegetables, the center needed its own space and found the building where it is now located.

Kring said that Friends of Families has existed almost as long as the Resource Center.

“It’s our program for families with young children, age birth to 5,” she said, “and we do different play groups throughout the week that are targeted to different ages,”

The program helps families transition their kids to kindergarten in cooperation with the school, so in addition to playgroups at the Town Hall and the library, they also hold a playgroup in the preschool classroom at Hinesburg Community School so families can get to know the school.

Twice a year, Friends of Families holds clothing and book swaps at the Town Hall where families can bring all the clothing that doesn’t fit anymore and exchange it for new clothes.

Kring is a big fan of the swaps.

“It’s one of the coolest events we do,” she said. “When we first moved to town I was like ‘What! This is crazy!’ You just bring all your stuff that doesn’t fit and no money is exchanged and everybody just picks the stuff that they need.”

Big variety of programs

The Resource Center sponsored performers at the Hinesburg Fall Festival until its demise and now, in partnership with the Hinesburg Land Trust, is part of the Hinesburg Stone Soup Celebration in October.

Friends of Families has organized a First Aid Course with the Hinesburg Fire Station or “pretty much anything that might interest young families,” said Kring.

Since 2016, they’ve run the Twice as Nice Consignment Store in the heart of Hinesburg on Route 116. After some state funding was discontinued, the board decided to start the store as a way to defray the costs of other programs, and so far, it’s working. The store is making money.

Other programs:

• Hinesburg Rides became part of the Resource Center in 2006. The program provides rides to the elderly or disabled. In addition to organizing ride sharing and carpooling, Hinesburg Rides has helped get a commuter bus that provides rides to help people do errands or get to the doctor or drugstore every other Tuesday.

“It can be incredibly isolating to live in a rural town like this and not be able to reach the services that you need,” said Kring. “Just to get a gallon of milk, it becomes kind of ridiculous.”

As part of new Hinesburg Rides program, the Resource Center has contracted with Affordable Transportation, an independent company based in Hinesburg, to take people around every other Tuesday if they need a ride.

• For almost as long as the Food Shelf has been around, the Hinesburg Community Resource Center has had the Emergency Funds program. It provides emergency assistance for families whose electricity has been shut off or is about to be shut off, families who need help with keeping the gas on or getting the oil refilled.

“There is state and federal heating assistance,” said Kring. “But for a lot of families there are odd cutoffs, so if you make $20 too much sometimes you don’t qualify to get your tank refilled. Or maybe you just get one tank full for the winter. But we live in Vermont; it obviously takes more than one tank to get you through the winter.”

Or maybe there are families working multiple jobs so they don’t qualify for these benefits because of income limits.

Kring said the Resource Center is the stopgap that steps in when someone doesn’t have the money to get their fuel tank filled, their electricity is going to be shut off, or they need help paying their rent.

• A newer program is an online senior calendar, which they hope to print and put at various town locations. Hinesburg doesn’t have a senior center, but there are a lot of events and programs for seniors, she said.

“There’s not a great way to communicate with everybody what is going on like at Town Hall, at the Library, the lectures, and the classes,” Kring said.

• As part of the Resource Center’s food outreach, there is a vacation food bag program. Families whose children get free or reduced rate meals in school can go to the Resource Center during school breaks and pick up a bag with a week’s worth of breakfast and lunch items.
• Medical equipment lending is another of the many programs that the Resource Center conducts. They loan things like wheelchairs, walkers, canes, commodes, and shower seats.

Goals

As far as Kring’s vision for the future, one major component is upping the Resource Center’s fundraising because owning their building does not mean that the Resource Center is free and clear. Now there are new expenses.

“We have to focus on all those costs that we didn’t have before, like paying for the electric and having a rainy-day fund for when the roof goes, things like that,” Kring said.

Another of her goals for the Resource Center is working to make the community more aware of the wide range of services that the center offers. She feels like they’ve been doing a better job about getting out the word about the vast scope of what they do because more donations are coming in with checks that are written to the Resource Center more than to the Food Shelf or other specific programs.

“That way we can move the money around,” Kring said. “If say, we have a heating crisis and we need to help in that way, the organization can respond as needs arise. Anything can happen.”