**UPDATE as of 6/3/2020**: as the crisis has unfolded, the need for emergency rental assistance for families that have been affected by COVID-19 has spiked. As such, as a volunteer on our hotline, you will likely be aiding with the RAFT rental assistance program described below: pre-screening for eligibility, assisting with applications, and working with property owners.
Thank you so much for your interest in volunteering to connect residents of Chelsea, Revere and surrounding communities to essential resources to help them make it through this unprecedented time. Please note that at this time we have a long list of volunteers waiting to get plugged in. We will do our best to incorporate all interested volunteers as soon as possible! Due to our community members' needs and our staff capacity, we will also be prioritizing respondents who have Spanish language ability, and/or are able to commit a certain number of hours.
At CONNECT at the Neighborhood Developers, families and individuals in our community can call our hotline and receive assistance accessing necessities such as unemployment benefits, emergency rental assistance, SNAP food benefits, internet, economic impact payments, and more. You can learn more about CONNECT here:
https://www.connectnow.org/ and the Neighborhood Developers here:
http://theneighborhooddevelopers.org. For an overview of our services in response to the COVID-19 outbreak here, visit
http://theneighborhooddevelopers.org/our-response.
As a volunteer on our hotline, you will be responding to incoming calls and following up with community members looking to access different forms of financial assistance. In this process, you will likely be handling sensitive information. Because of this, a CORI check is required of all volunteers, and will be emailed prior to starting to handle calls.
Please note that this interest form is connecting you specifically to CONNECT at the Neighborhood Developers; the first wave of volunteers will get plugged in to our efforts here at CONNECT. But, as we hear back from our community partners in Chelsea, and possibly Revere, about their interest and need for volunteers for their resource hotlines, we envision possibly connecting you to them as well, so please know that the information you enter here may be shared broadly in this way. However, we will always reach out to you before sharing your information with anyone else.