Level Up is a program in it’s 4th year offered by The Progress Center to make access to donated food items and personal care products more accessible to high school students. “Level Up” is a play on the teen gamer community where you master a level in a game and you move up to the next level. While also taking into consideration Maslow’s 5 levels toward self-actualization. Once teens are able to meet their basic needs of hunger, these teens can start focusing on their future instead of where their next meal will come from.
During the 2018 school year the Level Up program supported 35 students by providing them with new backpacks, personal care products like shampoo and toothbrushes and delivered 14,000 pounds of food!Sponsor a Student for ’19-’20 School Year
The Progress Center’s Executive Director, Jennifer Putnam and Development Manager, Miranda Ward, were happy to meet with MainStreet Foundation and Androscoggin Bank’s Vice President and Director of Marketing & Client Relations, Melissa Rock and accept a $3,500 grant on behalf of Level Up.
How will Level Up use these funds? By providing a reliable, healthy, no-barrier food source. By creating and maintaining a nutritional safety net for these high-risk children we hope to feed their still developing brains and bodies. By providing children with an alternative to starving or stealing or selling drugs or prostitution. By locating the student most at risk and providing them with basic nutritional and personal care products, we can give them a chance to learn and mature the way children are supposed to. And last but not least providing children with the knowledge that a complete stranger cares about them and wants them to be well.
See the article that kicked this all off here: urban.org