Grassroots initiative evolves through COVID-19 pandemic to help Centre County families

A grassroots initiative that started with one local family in need of food has grown into a full effort to help some of Centre County’s most vulnerable populations through the COVID-19 pandemic.

Linda Barton, a former ELL instructor within the State College Area School District, created the English-Language Learner Family Fund at the beginning of the pandemic to assist ELL students’ families with their most pressing needs.

After another ELL instructor contacted Barton regarding a student in need of food, Barton and her husband, also a former ELL instructor, purchased some groceries for the student’s family, which kicked off a chain reaction.

“We started thinking that this is not a once and done thing. It’s not just this young man and his family; it’s a lot of families. Should we do something more substantial? That call was the impetus for deciding we would want to provide food for families not working at the time,” Barton said. “They were mostly restaurant workers who were laid off at the end of March.”

Barton reached out to the other ELL teachers to ask if they’d be interested in helping and the initiative was born.

“We started just by word of mouth, and it pretty much remains that,” Barton said.

That word-of-mouth marketing and a few social posts on Barton’s personal Facebook page resulted in donations from all over the world, many coming in from some of Barton’s former students, as far afield as Costa Rica and China, Mexico and Japan. So far, the fund has raised approximately $40,000 with the help of 300-plus donors, all of which assists families of ELL students with their basic costs. A team of about 10 volunteers coordinate the fund’s efforts, which have expanded beyond providing groceries and to assisting families in need with everything from medical care to auto repairs.

“When it started, (we were providing) sustenance, basically: food, first of all, because people were starving, and then rent, because they were going to lose their apartments,” Barton said.

As family members began to return to work as pandemic restrictions lessened, the fund shifted to focus on emergency needs rather than rent.

“A few people drive for food delivery services but their cars broke down and they had expensive repairs,” Barton said. “We’ve had prescriptions that we’ve paid for ... utilities that were going to be turned off. ... We have a limited amount of cash, so we decided rather than the rent, we would limit it to emergency services and reached out to other services in the area who were able to help with rent.”

At its peak, the fund was supporting 20 families. Now, many of these families are likewise receiving assistance from other local organizations; several, however, have been forced to leave the Centre County area and seek work elsewhere.

As Barton and the team of volunteers look to the winter season, they had originally anticipated assisting families with utility bills in the height of winter. However, with some local restaurants closing again, they expect to return their attention to rent assistance.

“We’ve already lost three families who could not continue to live in State College independently. Our hope is that we won’t lose any more, since connection to school is the one variable that provides consistency and stability to these children whose lives have already been upended,” Barton said.

While she notes that community support and outreach for the English-Language Learner Family Fund have been “amazing,” Barton also acknowledges that funds are still needed for the upcoming, uncertain months.

“I believe we have a shared vision for an inclusive nation and we want to protect the vulnerable communities that we have. The group we’re working with is very vulnerable and we want to connect them and make them a part of the community. They make our lives easier, so we want to help them enjoy a better quality of life this year,” she said.

Donations to the English-Language Learner Family Fund can be made to @Linda-Barton via Venmo, or to eslinda@comcast.net via PayPal. Checks are also accepted, made out to Linda Barton and mailed to 182 Legion Lane, State College, PA 16801.