Published: October 05, 2008 11:42 pm            

Trish Hall new CAReS director

ASHLAND — Longtime Ashland resident Trish Hall is the new executive director of Community Assistance and Referral Services.

To accept her new position, Hall resigned as executive director of the Arts Council of Northeastern Kentucky, a part-time position she had held since 2001.

Hall succeeds Leslie Moore, who resigned as executive director of CAReS in late August to accept a teaching position in the Greenup County School District.

Hall said she decided to seek the CAReS position because she was well aware of the valuable role the agency plays in the community and thought the job would be both interesting and challenging.

CAReS was created nearly 20 years ago as a referral agency for those in need. The agency is primarily funded by more than 50 Boyd County churches who have agreed to be “covenant partners.” In addition to helping fund CAReS, the churches refer individuals and families seeking assistance to the agency. Also, whenever a church provides food, clothing or other assistance to families in need, it reports that help to CAReS. The goal is to reduce duplication by discouraging families from abusing the system by going from church to church for assistance.

While qualifying, referring and helping the needy remains the primary task of CAReS, it has over the years added other programs to help families with paying their utility bills and with purchasing prescription medicines.

While today is her first official day at CAReS, Hall already has spent time at the CAReS offices in The Neighborhood, the former Johnson’s Dairy building on Carter Avenue, and met and talked with the employees. As close friends with Stewart and Kathy Schneider, Hall said she already was quite familiar with CAReS and its work. Kathy Schneider is a VISTA worker and longtime board member at CAReS, and her husband is an active volunteer at the agency.

Hall also volunteered for “Cats For a Cause,” a successful effort by area alumni of the University of Kentucky to collect food for CAReS to help the needy.

Hall said the day she worked with UK alumni and members of the Key and Beta clubs at Paul G. Blazer High School collecting more than 400 food items for the needy was “festive and heart warming.”

“To me, it was another reminder of just how giving the people of this community are,” she said. “We are very blessed to live in such a caring community.”

Hall is becoming director just as CAReS is beginning its biggest project of the year: The Giving Tree, which provides gifts and food baskets to hundreds of needy families each Christmas.

The coming Christmas season created a need to move quickly to find a new director, said J.T. Norris, CAReS chairman. Fortunately, Norris said the selection committee had so many excellent people from whom to choose that choosing the new director was not easy.

Norris said the committee was impressed with Hall’s grant-writing experience and with her years of executive experience with another nonprofit agency, which, like CAReS, often finds itself with not enough money to do all it wants to do.

Norris said Hall came highly recommended by many others in the community and as a longtime member of the Ashland Board of Education — where she is in the midst of her fourth, four-year term — she knows the community well and is well known in the community. Those qualities will serve her well at CAReS, Norris said.

Hall also will be involved in completing the renovation of The Neighborhood. While CAReS and River Cities Harvest already are in the former dairy, funds still are being raised to move the Community Kitchen, the Dressing Room (Federated Charities), and Ashland Area Presbyterian Ministries into the building.

Hall said she thinks having five agencies that serve the needy under one roof is “a great idea,” and she is looking forward to helping complete the project.

While the arts council certainly caters to a different segment of the community than CAReS does, Hall said she thinks her experience with working with a nonprofit agency will serve her well at CAReS. Like CAReS, the arts council was always seeking to do the most it could with a limited budget.

A graduate of the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va., Hall first became involved in the community as an active volunteer in schools. That gave her the opportunity to work closely with children, teachers and school administrators and eventually led to an elected seat on the school board.

“I have had the opportunity to get to know a lot of people in the community,” Hall said. “Working at CAReS will give me an opportunity to meet and work with even more people. I’m really looking forward to it.”

JOHN CANNON can be reached at jcannon@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2649.

        

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