News

Special thanks to our good friends at UniBank who made a generous donation to support WCAC’s Emergency Fuel Fund! Pictured here (L-R), UniBank President & CEO William Mahoney, WCAC Director of Energy Resources Mary Mary Herlihy Knittle, WCAC Executive Director Jill Dagilis and UniBank Vice President of Government & Community Affairs Matthew Wally. The funds will be available for vulnerable households struggling to meet the cost of keeping their home warm.

WCAC was pleased to welcome a variety of our community partners to our Head Start program to celebrate the 20th annual Read Across America Day. We appreciate the strong support for our program and those willing to lend their voices to stress the importance of early education literacy. Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss! View additional images from the day here.

Kickoff the new month with the latest news from WCAC! We’re celebrating our vital VITA volunteers, a 25th birthday for Head Start and are ready for winter weather! Read more here.

In conjunction with the nationwide Earned Income Tax Credit Awareness Day, the Worcester Free Tax Service Coalition today kicked off its 13th year of providing free tax preparation services for local, low-income households at a program held at Assumption College. WCAC is a proud partner of the Coalition and site for the program which utilizes IRS-trained volunteers to prepare tax returns for households earning less than $54,000. Read more here.

Worcester Community Action Council is pleased to welcome Leedan Dearden as a Senior Accountant for the agency. She brings with her a diverse accounting background, having most recently worked for Home Staff, LLC . Read more here.

Enjoy our Holiday Helpings of warm coats, warm homes and warm hearts. Read more here.

Thanks to the incredible generosity of several key corporate and community partners, WCAC was was able to deliver new winter coats to all of the children enrolled in the agency’s Head Start, Early Head Start and Healthy Families of Southern Worcester County, as well as provide for the children of teen parents enrolled in the agency’s Job & Education Center just as the first true frost of the season arrived this week. Read full story here.

Southbridge Credit Union presented WCAC’s Head Start program with a check for $1,000 to support its participation in a nationwide literacy event known as Read for the Record. On Thursday, October 27th, 2016 , WCAC’s preschool classrooms will join classes nationwide to gather to learn, laugh, and read this year’s campaign book, The Bear Ate Your Sandwich by Julia Sarcone-Roach, as part of the world’s largest shared reading experience. Read for the Record inspires adults to read with children, spurs policymakers and organizations to take action towards transformative change in early education, and puts books in the hands of more children across the country.

Southbridge Credit Union’s generous sponsorship of this event enabled Worcester Community Action Council’s Head Start program to purchase 210 copies of the book so that each Head Start preschool student will be able to take a copy home to keep, while maintaining several copies in the program’s lending library for families to enjoy for years to come. WCAC will welcome thirteen ‘celebrity’ readers to its classrooms to participate in this important literacy event.