Jackson County United Way conducted its annual meeting Monday evening at a Seymour eatery.
The event at Brewskies Downtown recognized United Way’s accomplishments this past year and highlighted the impact it has had on the community.
Maci Baurle, JCUW’s executive director and development director, said more than $130,000 was raised in 2021 through an economic relief initiative to support emergent COVID-19 needs in the community. These funds went toward five Jackson County nonprofits.
Looking into the future, Baurle said a 2022 goal for the organization is to collaborate with county and city officials to expand Charity Tracker, an online program that helps people connect to assistive services. Currently, there are 25 organizations in the program, and Baurle said she hopes more will participate.
Community Impact Director Stephanie Strothmann also is the organization’s Covering Kids and Families director, a program that helps local citizens obtain health care coverage.
Strothmann said she served 52 inmates at the Jackson County Jail in Brownstown and 25 people at the Anchor House East shelter in Seymour with health coverage assistance. Because of this, she said more people understood their health coverage information and would get preventative care. They also wouldn’t have to worry about noncovered trips to the hospital or emergency room.
Through Covering Kids and Families, Strothmann said 192 people in Jackson County were successfully awarded health coverage.
With SingleCare, a prescription drug discount program, Strothmann said people in the community were able to save $10,930 on their medications.
Strothmann said United Way had a successful 2021 and looks forward to continuing that work this year.
“We know that 2021 has worked toward our very large job, which is to ensure every eligible person in our county has health coverage,” she said. “2022 will bring new challenges with the ending of the public health emergency, and we will be needed more than ever to help folks navigate this change. We will be needed to answer questions, lead people to resources that can help and most of all, be there to ensure that people can keep their health coverage.”
Financial Stability Director Jena Hanks reported that 2021 was a big year for the Free Income Tax Assistance program, which was able to serve 528 clients. That’s the most since the beginning of the program, and 3,515 tax returns have been filed in the history of the program.
Through FITA, $669,731 was given back in federal refunds to filers, $67,852 in state refunds and $109,121 in earned income credit, Hanks said.
Last year, United Way facilitated 14 Community Conversation sessions. These sessions were used to get input from community members as to what kind of community they would want and what barriers exist.
Across the diverse set of people who participated in those conversations, Hanks said participants thought an ideal community is safe, healthy and united, has more equal opportunities and is financially stable and connected.
Participants said the barriers preventing that ideal community are affordable housing, mental health resources, collaboration between agencies, transportation and affordable child care.
Hanks said a full report on the 2021 Community Conversations will be released in the spring with one session still planned.
United Way also provided two Bridges Out of Poverty workshops, presented by training and publishing company aha! Process, that happened in October. These workshops were designed to teach people in the community what life is like living in poverty and how families that live that way adapt to their environment.
Anchor House and the Community Foundation of Jackson County partnered with United Way to host the programs. The foundation funded these workshops through a grant from Lilly Endowment Inc.
Another aha! Process workshop called Getting Ahead in a Just-Gettin’-By World will be happening in Jackson County in the spring, and Hanks said it is about moving from financial struggle into stability.
Emily Engelking, engagement director for JCUW, said the organization was able have its 25th Day of Caring in 2021. This program brings community volunteers together to complete projects around Jackson County. Some of the projects included painting, cleaning and weed eating certain locations.
Forty-five projects were completed with the help of more than 175 volunteers, Engelking said, and she’s hoping there will be more this year after scaling down the participation due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021.
“We’re hoping this year that we can be back hopefully to normal and have maybe hundreds of projects and maybe thousands of volunteers,” Engelking said. “Who knows? The sky’s the limit.”
This year’s Day of Caring is scheduled for May 10.
JCUW’s Rock’n Ready program provides free school supplies to local families.
Engelking said in 2020, 142 students were registered in Brownstown and 857 in Seymour. In 2021, Brownstown had 59 registered students and Seymour had 194.
While the 2021 Rock’n Ready numbers were much lower than the registrations in 2020, Engelking said there was an incredible amount of students who were able to get school supplies from walk-ins, and easily more than 1,200 students were served.
Through impact funding from 2021 and early 2022 campaigns, Engleking said JCUW has been able to provide $445,750 to 19 different community partner organizations.
“The board is focused on ensuring that we achieve collective impact with partners that work in coordination to drive community change,” she said.