More than 50 years of community action

District 4 Human Resources Development Council is one of the oldest community action agencies in the country.

It has been around since 1965 and for a time bounced all over town before settling at 2229 Fifth Ave.

"Community action came about in 1964 with Lyndon B. Johnson and the war on poverty," Executive Director Carilla French said Monday.

The goal of community action, French added, is to help low-income people break through the barriers of poverty to the side of self-sufficiency and to advocate for economic and social advancement. HRDC serves Hill, Blaine and Liberty counties.

"We started hand-in-hand with the civil rights movement, and that movement helped get community action through Congress. It's all about assisting individuals and breaking that cycle of poverty," she said. "Our very first program was Head Start, and we have one of the oldest Head Starts in the nation."

Among the HRDC programs intended to achieve the organization's goals are the domestic abuse program; the weatherization program; employment and training program, which offers education assistance; Northern Montana Child Development Center, which includes Early Head Start and Head Start; the housing and food bank program; and the energy program.

HRDC has also been involved in the Buffalo Court senior housing and Antelope Court ADA-compliant family housing projects.

"We run the Low Income Energy Assistance Program, ... we do adult education and literacy, we help individuals prepare for the high school equivalency test, and we also administer that test," she said, adding, "Our employment and training program also administers the Pathway program.

"(Care) Pathways is brand new - started Jan. 1," she said. "Pathways supplanted the work readiness component program, and that works specifically with TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families)."

HRDC doesn't administer TANF, French said, but it does work with clients to assist them.

French cited a laundry list of statistics which support HRDC's practical action.

Last year, she said, 362 households received household assistance; 20 furnaces and eight hot water heaters were replaced; 61 households were assisted with energy share - "if they have a disconnect service notice it can keep them from getting their power shut off"; 36 people received job training; 14 people went through the high school equivalency programs; 17 youth and 45 adults received work experience - 21 of those were placed in permanent employment; 32 people participated in adult education program; 2,500 women and children in domestic abuse situations received shelter and food. HRDC also manned the crisis hotline, housed more than 1,400 people in section 8 households, weatherized 31 homes in the three counties and distributed more than 100,000 pounds of food through the community food bank, French said.

"We have our domestic abuse program," she added. "We're helping individuals all the time escape situations of violence and abuse and to help them find employment, help them find child care, help them find housing, so they can take care of themselves, and their families and get out of a domestic violence situation."

HRDC is constantly assessing itself, French said, to make sure it remains relevant and continues to achieve its goals.

"How we measure success is any person who advances up the scale because, really, all of us are one emergency away from being in poverty, for the most part," she said.

The people served, she said, are those who have worked the same job for years and then they got laid off; or recently divorced single moms who have been out of the workforce since being married and now are trying to figure out how to get back to school while taking care of kids and paying rent; the elderly on fixed incomes who are hit with a medical emergency and all of a sudden don't have the money to pay heating bills or buy groceries; young families who are just starting out; college students who are struggling to make ends meet and pay for school.

The greatest challenge for HRDC is getting the word out, French said.

Although they've been around for a long time, she said, it's still difficult to raise money for the agency because many people think it's a government organization.

"We're a private nonprofit - we are not a government agency," she said, adding that the organization does apply for and receive government grant funding.

"We do receive some government funding, specifically to be a community action agency. Our big federal grant, which only provides 5 percent of our funding, is the Community Services Bloc Grant. That's a special grant just for community action."

HRDC is personal for French. She considers herself one of the many success stories connected to the community-action organization.

"I was in high school, and I didn't realize it until after I came to work here, but the summer youth program that helped me in high school was provided by the community action agency (based) in Kalispell. So my very first job was a summer youth work experience," she said.

French, who is from Polson, was served by the District X HRDC.

But it didn't stop there. In college, French said, she was a single mom, and one of the HRDC programs helped her continue to go to school.

"It helped me pay my power bills, helped me really to stay in school so I could support me and my daughter," she said.

French said several HRDC former and current employees have been helped by various programs, such as getting child care while being educated, or getting adult education training.

French looked back on a client success story.

"We had one client who had been in a generational family with Section 8, had been on Section 8 for 25 years, either as a child or a parent," she said. "Two years ago, they finally got off Section 8, and they're teaching their children to be self-sufficient and to take care of themselves moving on."