100 Neighbors Who Care Doing Major Good In Bangor Region

A friend passed along an item they’d heard about, with a very interesting way to give back to the community.

And it sounds like it is working very well.

The group is called 100 Neighbors Who Care-Penobscot Valley

This sounds very simple and straight forward, and yes it works.

Here is their statement

It’s Simple. We Meet. We Vote. We Donate.

Four times a year the group meets. The only objective of the meeting is to give money to a deserving community not for profit.

Each member of the group brings a check in the amount of $100. And there are now over 150 members, so if you do the math you realize how that money adds up.

At each of the quarterly meetings, 3 groups pitch to the members why their non-profit organization deserves the money. What they do. How they’d spent the funds, etc.

The 100 Neighbors vote and one of the 3 groups gets the funds.

Recently Bangor based Hope for Homeless received a check in the amount of $16,500 to assist them in their mission to provide the unhoused population of Bangor with everything they need and to connect them to resources to help them move to permanent housing.

The people in the photo are Ann Sweeney, co-founder of Hope for Homeless. She and her husband started the organization after he survived what was believed to be a fatal cancer diagnosis. They decided they wanted to give back to the community and have done it in a huge way with Hope for Homeless.  With her is Joshua St Louis, a 100 Neighbors member who nominated her organization to receive the donation. Ann says she'd never met him before the 100 Neighbors meeting, but that he's been a big supporter of HFH.

This group of 100 Neighbors has been active locally since March of 2021, and has made at least $10 thousand dollar donations to Sarahs House, NICU Parents Fund at Norther Light Health, Maine Veterans Project, House in the Woods, The Shepard’s Godparent Home of Bangor, UCP of Maine, Courageous Steps Project, and Hope for The Homeless.

Less than an hour quarterly for the members, and a $100 check from each member, and amazing things are happening in our community.

Here is the groups’ website if you are considering joining.  Next meeting is June 5^th at Jeff’s Catering in Brewer.