ReLIEF helps alleviate poverty by serving those with the lowest income — those who cannot afford low-cost goods and services — while providing training opportunities to enrolled trainees, and offering items and services for sale to a wider audience at a very reasonable cost. During the past year, the demand for ReLIEF’s Essential Goods Program has grown in tandem with the unemployment rates and faltering economy. However, the people served by ReLIEF face not a future threat, but an immediate crisis.

According to the 2000 US Census, Chittenden County is home to approximately 4300 households receiving food stamps, 7500 residents with some high school education, but no diploma, and a January 2009 unemployment rate of 6.8%. By providing a way to reuse more materials and train more individuals in more places, ReLIEF serves more families and individuals in poverty or heading toward poverty.

ReLIEF also provides an opportunity for our trainees to assess, trouble-shoot, and repair donated material goods, which are then donated to families in crisis and nonprofit agencies or sold at a reasonable price to a wide customer base. The cycle of environmental stewardship (donated material goods, which might otherwise end up in the landfill are repaired and reused), educational training (assessing the functionality of items and learning how to repair large and small appliances, computers, or electronics) and economic development (through our donation program social service agencies can better serve their clients and families in crisis who can then focus on an education or job hunting) are cyclical in nature and one area cannot function without the other two working smoothly.

ReLIEF’s programs are collaborations with a wide variety of service providers, schools, state agencies, private individuals, and nonprofit organizations. In order to expand both our reuse and training programs, we work with entities, such as: VT Youth Conservation Corps, Vermont Works for Women, Department of Labor, Department for Children and Families, Vermont Adult Learning, COTS, Howard Human Services, Spectrum Youth Services, YouthBuild USA, Habitat for Humanity, VT Dept. of Natural Resources, Community Action Agencies, Chittenden Solid Waste District, and others.

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