More than 130 people crammed into the conference room at the Community Action Agency of Somerville to tell their stories of economic recovery to Governor Patrick Thursday morning. ~Photo by Ashley Taylor By Ashley Taylor All seats were taken, and still people came in the door. Then someone started forcing people out of their seats and stacking the chairs to free space as more than 130 people crammed into the conference room at the Community Action Agency of Somerville in Union Square to tell their stories of economic recovery to Governor Patrick Thursday morning. The Massachusetts Recovery and Reinvestment Office organized the roundtable discussion as part of a series of events commemorating the first anniversary of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), otherwise known as the stimulus bill, which President Obama signed into law on February 17, 2009. According to www.recovery.gov, the website tracking how the stimulus funds are used, Massachusetts has received $4.6 Billion in stimulus awards, money which has been credited with creating 9.3 thousand jobs. Governor Patrick asked people to share stories of how the stimulus money has helped them, and people had many successes to recount.

Several people described how anti-poverty organizations, such as the Community Action Agency of Somerville (CAAS) and the Action for Boston Community Development (ABCD) had helped them. Those programs both received stimulus money. For example, after a year of unemployment, Elizabeth Gilianas found a job with ABCD LearningWorks, the workforce development center of Action for Boston Community Development (ABCD). The job let her support her two kids and return to school to study health and human services.

CAAS, which received about 700 thousand dollars in stimulus money, provides many services to people coping with poverty and all of the problems that accompany it. As Dennis Fischman, CAAS Director of Planning, put it, CAAS helps people "to get help that lets them stay in their jobs, things like child care, food stamps, transportation, things that allow people to go to work and not lose their jobs because of other problems outside of the workplace."

Danielle Ray attended the meeting to praise one such service, Head Start, the pre-school program which CAAS runs in Cambridge and Somerville: "After my ex left me with triplets, I didn't know where to go, and CAAS was the one that helped me to get on my feet again." All three of her children, who are now four, go to Head Start for half a day. Of Head Start, she says, "I trust them, they're trustworthy, I know that my kids are always fed, they're always clean, every classroom, every facility that you go to, they're always clean, and they're wonderful, and they teach, and my kids are learning." If she could get vouchers for her children to attend Head Start all day, she would, and that would allow her to get a job. But for the moment, she is a stay-at-home mom and grateful for the help she receives.

In addition to serving the poor, CAAS also helps people by employing them. In November and December, CAAS hired seven people using stimulus money, five of whom came off unemployment, according to CAAS Director of Advocacy Melissa McWhinney.

Local business people also benefited from the stimulus money. "Our whole business is built off the stimulus," said Marsha Morris, of Green Beginnings Inc. the weatherization services and training business she manages with the company's founder, Leah Daniels. In fact, Daniels founded the business about a month after the stimulus bill passed. Morris said that, "We knew the money would be coming over three years, so we did the research, and we started looking for ARRA contracts." These contracts are parcels of federal stimulus money that support green business.

The discussion also highlighted the way education leads to jobs. Morris and Daniels, of Green Beginnings, Inc., decided to found a non-profit alongside their business in order to train people in weatherization services. "Our first training went off in November…and [we] employed everyone that graduated from that program."

Chris Moy, head of Interstate Food Equipment Service, a company that repairs restaurant equipment, earned a StreetWise M.B.A. in 2007 from the Interise program. He credits the program with giving him the organizational skills to expand his business. "In the course of the recession, our industry, the restaurant industry, has really taken quite a beating, but one of the reasons why today I'm able to hire people even when we're in the bad part of it is the Governor's program, and that's called the Interise program… [The program] allows business owners to better educate themselves as to how to go about organizing their business." Moy said that "Back when I started the program, we had about 50 employees in Massachusetts and now we're running at about 125, and a big part of it is through this program."

The Governor closed the meeting by urging people: "Don't just tell me your story. Tell somebody else. Tell somebody else your story so that people appreciate how important it is that we stay on this task until everybody has an opportunity to grow better, stronger, and healthier going forward." This article follows his advice.