The Pawcatuck Neighborhood Center has honored community members with its Good Neighbor award for more than 30 years. This year, for the first time in its
The Pawcatuck Neighborhood Center has honored community members with its Good Neighbor award for more than 30 years. This year, for the first time in its
Published December 28. 2020 4:34PM By
The Day and theday.com have a longstanding holiday tradition of publishing a series on interesting local people who come to our attention or more often, whom the newsroom seeks out, because the subjects are typically not in the limelight. The articles share a theme, and the one for 2020 was crystal clear: people who stepped up to help others in this difficult year. They are the bright lights of 2020.
Eleven articles in all, done by Day reporters and photojournalists, recount the response of people, through their jobs or volunteering, to the familiar litany of hardship: pandemic deaths, emergency calls, recuperation, hunger, job loss, evictions and no way to pay the rent; and in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd, the need to re-assert the pervasiveness of racism. The effects of pandemic and protest often overlapped.
This is part of a series that highlights the work of those who stepped up to help others during the difficult days of 2020.
Stonington When someone calls the Pawcatuck Neighborhood Center looking for help with food, paying their rent or heating bill or even filling out paperwork, Abby Laquerre is on the other end of the line.
Laquerre, 52, is the center s social services representative and, before the COVID-19 pandemic struck, she would typically receive about six calls a day for assistance. Since March, that number has escalated to 15 or 20.
That means quickly getting clients the assistance they need or referring them to a partner agency that can help.