Local Impact Grant helps nonprofit turn lives around with home repairs

Step by step, brush stroke by brushstroke, volunteers are changing hundreds of lives, one home repair at a time.

Rebuilding Together of Manchester is making a difference in the community, with some help from a NBC Universal Local Impact Grant that it was awarded last year.

The nonprofit helps income-eligible homeowners do emergency repairs and maintain their homes for free. They assist low-income, disabled and elderly homeowners.

“This morning I said I said, ‘Oh, my God, what are all these people doing?'” Claudette Arthurs, of Manchester, said.

Mother-daughter homeowners, Arthurs and her daughter Candice Cunningham, were selected for the Rebuilding Together of Manchester Program.

“I'm smiling. That's it. I swear. No, that’s a laugh. I'm happy,” Cunningham said as several volunteers worked on her house Wednesday morning.

The goal is to address social, economic and health inequities, and keep aging homeowners in place as long as possible.

“We're all about safety modifications in homes, and making sure that the homes are safe as possible,” Molly Devanney, Rebuilding Together of Manchester executive director, said.

Devanney said that could look like installing a fire alarm or a handicap access ramp.

“It's the best feeling in the world,” Devanney said. “Some of them are completely blown away that we're doing this for free, and that they're eligible for the program.”

“Sometimes it's just life changing, because they can stay in their house,” she continued. “They don't have to get out and move somewhere else, they can stay where they live, where they feel comfortable and it's safe for them to be at home by themselves.”

In Cunningham’s case, the family’s damaged roof got a much-needed repair.

“It was falling in, and so again, huge safety concerns,” Devanney said.

Once that was done, volunteers laid a fresh coat of sunshine yellow paint on the home’s exterior.

The repairs are a gamechanger for Cunningham.

“I'm a single mother of four: two boys, two girls,” she said. “So I'm trying and look around to get projects, you know, people that could help me.”

She is also on disability, with arthritis in both knees.

“My mom does most of everything. I'm just like a third-wheeler,” Cunningham said.

Arthurs, who helps a lot with the four teen kids, is thankful for what the repairs will mean to them all.

“My daughter will not be complaining about the water coming down in her room. And you know, the boys, also, they will be very happy,” Arthurs said.

Cunningham and Arthurs are just two recipients of all of this hard work. Each year, Rebuilding Together of Manchester helps out about 75 households.

“It's an old house and it's going to need work. But you know what, it's a beautiful home,” Cunningham said.

Proving that home is where the heart is - with a little help from volunteers full of heart.

“These people worked hard,” Cunningham said. “I really appreciate it.”

Rebuilding Together of Manchester got a $15,000 grant through its NBC Universal Local Impact Grant last year.

Nonprofits still have time to apply up until the evening of April 19.