Neighbors helping Neighbors

Published 2:40 pm Wednesday, April 27, 2022

The Link of Cullman County is asking the public to cast their votes in order to receive a $25,000 grant.

Recently named as one of the top 200 finalists in the national State Farm Neighborhood Assist Program, The Link needs to reach the top 100 to move to the next round.

Following the recommendation of local State Farm Agent Shirley Quatlebaum the Link joined the list of 4000 non-profit organizations seeking funding towards their various neighborhood improvement projects.

If awarded, The Link will use their winnings to fund its recently founded L.I.N.K. program that assists families in need of emergency rehousing.

Launched in July of last year, L.I.N.K. (Low cost. Income based. Non-site specific. Kids and family stay together.) is currently experiencing what Executive Director Melissa Betts described as a “lull” in funding in between cycles of grants from the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs.

“After we started this program and saw how much of a need there was and how much good it was doing, we just knew that we couldn’t not offer this, so these funds will keep the program going until we are able to get the next round of funding from ADECA,” Betts said.

One goal of the program is to enable displaced families to stay together when restrictions of a typical women’s shelter situation would require them to separate. Betts describes two specific instances which the program enabled one single mother to remain with her two sons one of which suffers from numerous medical disabilities requiring consistent care and medications and another whose son was just over the age limit of 14 that a shelter would no longer consider to be a child and have him placed alone in a men’s shelter.

By partnering with local property owners, the program offers participants temporary housing for 8 weeks while working closely with them to find affordable rentals which Betts says has become increasingly difficult due to the current state of the local housing market.

“We like to refer to all of our participants as ‘neighbors’ and this money would just allow us to help our neighbors in a way that we couldn’t normally do,” Betts said.

Voting is ongoing until May 6 and votes are able to be cast 10 times per day by visiting neighborhoodassist.com or by scanning the QR code.