Last month, ACCT said goodbye to our Community Engagement Coordinator, Melissa Nelson, whose efforts at ACCT pioneered our entire Community Engagement Program.  Over the course of her AmeriCorps service year at ACCT, Melissa helped nearly 200 residents gain access to healthy food through an edible landscaping project at ACCT parks in Starksboro.  Additionally, she helped 78 ACCT applicants and residents with housing placement services, and organized two dozen volunteers to lend a hand painting, raking, and doing other projects that enhanced our residents' housing.  She also led the planning for our first Addison County Housing Summit, among myriad other activities that made ACCT and our properties a better place to live and work, and we are immensely grateful for her service.

This month, ACCT welcomes Ryan Gyukeri to the position of Community Engagement Coordinator.  Ryan is a senior at UVM and we are very excited to have him on board for this next year of AmeriCorps Service.

Finally, our Community Engagement Program wouldn't be possible without the support of some very generous funders, including the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board (VHCB) that sponsors the VHCB AmeriCorps program in VT, and the Vermont Community Foundation's Walter Cerf Fund, which provided a generous grant to cover some of the costs.  We are so thankful to be a part of such a generous community that supports affordable housing through grants and community service.  

​“SASH is a place where you can meet other people - different kinds of people - you can feel relaxed and go and have a good time. It's very well rounded, the number of programs that you're offered, I mean they do so much: the coloring and the walking groups and the exercise and the stretching. Just the whole gambit of things you can do - it really helps your mental health. I've found that my mood improves by going to things because we don't have anything going on here. SASH has been a godsend - I've been doing it for quite a while.” 

This is just one response from SASH participants who were surveyed around the state in June 2017.  The survey gathered qualitative information and received many positive anecdotes about the importance of the SASH program in participants' lives.  ACCT's SASH program in Vergennes was one of the sites that was surveyed, and we are proud to see our residents reporting a better quality of life thanks to SASH.