BELLOWS FALLS, Vt. – In mid-October, the Rockingham Energy Committee’s 2024 Window Dressers Community Build (our fourth annual build) assembled 205 insulating window inserts for 27 families in Rockingham, Springfield, Dummerston, Proctorsville, Perkinsville, and Claremont, N.H. About half of the inserts were provided at no cost to low-income residents, thanks to a Grow Grant from the New England Grassroots Environment Fund and fundraising by Window Dressers. The work was done at the St. Charles Social Center in Bellows Falls, from Oct. 11-15.
The inserts were built by people who ordered them, community volunteers including Scott Pickup, municipal manager of Rockingham and Bellows Falls, and Vermont Academy (VA) students and faculty member Christine Armiger. We had a total 94 volunteers who each worked a four-hour shift, or 376 volunteer hours donated.
To have several VA students and faculty member Christine Armiger enter at the tail end of an afternoon shift was a jolt of fresh energy. This lifted the tired volunteers to a level of enjoying instructing students to the level of proficiency they have been doing all day. They were the teachers, and were excited by the students’ openness to learning and taking a risk with some hands-on learning. A large crew of VA students also helped with cleanup when we were done.
Window Dressers is a nonprofit started in Maine in 2010 to help make a cold, drafty church more comfortable in the winter, and lower its heating costs. The program has since expanded to other towns in Maine, and to Vermont and New Hampshire, with 23 community builds in Vermont this fall, each building about 200 inserts or more.
To volunteer at one of the remaining 2024 Window Dressers builds in Vermont – or to sign up to request inserts for your home, business, or local nonprofit in 2025 – visit www.windowdressers.org/vermont-community-builds, and contact the build location nearest to you.