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Town of Milford Updates
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The Milford Town Hall will be opening today, Monday July 6, 2020 at 8 AM. Please plan to wear a face mask or face covering when entering and conducting business. The ONLY entrances open will be our ADA accessible entrance and the lower level entrance located on the Court Street side of Town Hall.
Scheduling an appointment prior to coming to Town Hall is strongly recommended. Should you need to deliver a document, please use the drop box located on the North Bow Street side of Town Hall.
Upon entering, a receptionist will greet you at the entrance and inquire about the business you need to conduct and connect you with the proper Department.
For all other Town and local COVID-19 updates, please visit the Town of Milford, MA website. Also check out up-to-date information at Milford TV (information also available in Spanish and Portuguese). For the Town Clerk's July newsletter, click here.
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Milford Community Telethon THIS Friday!
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The mission of Milford TV is to provide a safe and inclusive environment that promotes alternative education, technological skills, which builds character, and fosters the notion of the importance of community, respecting and serving others, while executing their first amendment right. By providing the Milford community with training, tools, and a safe environment to produce in, we hope to provide an outlet/platform for community partners and members to expand their organization's reach and mission.
In recent months the town of Milford, our state, and our country have sadly had to take serious precautions to ensure the safety of all their residents. In this process individuals, businesses, non-profits, and community organizations alike have suffered if not lost their business entirely. Many have had cancelled events, fundraisers and had to change how they operate in order to stay afloat.
The Friends of the Milford Town Library have sadly had to cancel many of the fundraisers and programs they host at the Milford Town Library due to the state mandates and stay at home orders. Just as many community organizations have had to rethink operations, The Friends have had to cancel all programming and projects due to lack of funding. The Friends gain much of their proceeds from book sales and donations which pay for the programs put on at the Library, as well as the garden project, which has also been put on hold.
The Milford Youth Center has had to adjust from after school programs and summer camp, to online programming and summer rentals. With their scheduled fundraiser cancelled, months of missed revenue from cancelled rentals and summer camp, and their Program Coordinator position at the Youth Center, which provides our community the ability to provide necessary and crucial services, is at risk and needs funding to keep necessary town employees employed.
 Lastly, the Milford Humanitarian Coalition has started up their Summer Lunch Program for the students and families of Milford who are suffering from schools being closed. The program takes about $2,000 a week to run and with the program beginning 3 months early this year, the program is quickly running out of funding and summer has yet to begin for the kids of Milford.
For this reason, we are requesting support from local businesses to help the Friends of the Milford Town Library, the Milford Youth Center, and the Milford Humanitarian Coalition with our upcoming Telethon on Friday, July 10, 2020 from 3:00-8:00 PM LIVE on Milford TV. In a collaborative effort to help the local community organizations in Milford, Milford TV offered to join forces and put on a telethon to draw the necessary attention to the Friends of the Library, Youth Center, and Humanitarian Coalition's endeavors to raise the necessary funding to retain community programs and employment.
 As businesses re-open and we regain some semblance of normalcy, we would like to extend an opportunity to not only support your favorite community organization, but provide your business a promotional spot announcing that you are still part of their community! We would love for YOUR BUSINESS to be one of the community sponsors to help kick off the fundraising! As a thank you, all sponsors will be recognized throughout the telethon broadcast! Donations of $200, $300, or $500 you will receive a 15sec, 30sec, or 60sec promotional video created by Milford TV. This promo video is to promote your business, however, is not a platform for direct sales. Sponsors are also welcome to come onto the live virtual broadcast to present the sponsorship, if you would like! We would like to thank our three current sponsors:
- $500 sponsor: CrossFit Never Doubt
- $300 sponsor: Tamagni Wealth Advisors
- $300 sponsor: Ferrone FIT | Project FIT Nutrition
All funds raised will go into Milford TV's General fund and will be distributed equally between the three community organizations involved. Donations can be made by cash, check to Milford TV, or PayPal. Visit
here for more info!
Milford TV anticipates without community support, the impact this pandemic will have on our community organizations' programming will be devastating.
As always, we appreciate your past support and we thank you for your time and consideration for this opportunity. We are asking to have all sponsorships finalized by Monday July 6th, 2020. If there are any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us!
If you need additional information, please call Milford TV, Executive Director Liz Harkins at 508-333-9207.
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Happy July everyone!
Since we unfortunately are not able to have a Summer Camp this year, we will be offering some small group on-site programs and one virtual program a day starting July 13th! Programs include:
- Martial Arts with Anthony Miele every Monday beginning July 13th- Aug. 17th
- Arts & Crafts with Joanna Abrantes every Wednesday beginning July 15th -Aug. 19th
- Ultimate Frisbee with Elizabeth Siber every Thursday beginning July 16th-Aug. 20th
There will be limited supplies for the art sessions so please sign up now if interested! We currently have 4 more spots for all six weeks of our Summer Art session, 5 more spots for all six weeks of our Summer Martial Arts program provided by Anthony Miele from Lone Wolf Kajukenbo Karate Studio, and several spots open for our newly added Summer Ultimate Frisbee Program provided by BUDA! Sign up now to secure your spot!
For anyone interested in signing up for Martial Arts, Arts & Craft Sessions, or Ultimate Frisbee, please contact
[email protected] or call 508-473-1756 before July 6th to sign up and make your payment! If sign-up's fill up, we will also be offering a zoom link for anyone who would like to sign up and participate at home! For PDF of calendar, click
here.
Along with all of our drop-in virtual programs we will also be offering Virtual Fishing with Nick Harkins on Fridays at 2:00 pm! So, keep checking our social media, website and Milford TV's local access channels for all of our programs!
You can also still help the Milford Youth Center by creating virtual programs of skills, hobbies or activities that you would like to share with everyone! You might even be featured on Milford TV! If interested, please email our Program Coordinator at
here.
Thanks to the outreach of support from our volunteers, staff, Milford TV, and our other community members we have been able to continue to offer virtual programs on our
Facebook page
, the new Milford TV app for your phone and/or on the Milford TV local access channel (Comcast (channel 8) or Verizon (channel 38) if you live in Milford)! You now can participate in some of our short virtual tutorials, crafts, activity ideas and other programs right from home. Programs/times may be subject to change based on volunteer availability.
You can also check out any previous programming
here
!
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 MYC families and community members, we are hoping to see some of you soon, whether it is participating in some of our small group on-site activities and/or during a rental! The Milford Youth Center will be re-opening, by appointment only, for small rentals, starting July 13th through August 14th.
As we are continuing to adjust during this unprecedented time, here is some information on rental space this summer
:
- Renters must abide by all CDC, state & local compliance guidelines;
- Rental times between 1pm-4 pm & 7-8 pm, Monday through Friday;
- Weekends available but must pay additional custodial fee for proper sanitation;
- (2) Half Gym- Adult over the age of 21 must be the renter;
- Social distancing must be kept and proper PPE in use;
- Own equipment must be used;
- Groups must have phone meeting, emailed or scanned paperwork back and payment completed before requested rental date (payments can be made by credit card or cash/check mailed or dropped off);
- All scheduling is by appointment only!!!
For more information and to set up a meeting, please call Katie at 508-473-1756 or email if you have any questions at
[email protected].
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HOOP Crew Youth Basketball
Summer Clinics
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MHS Varsity Boys Basketball Coach and Director of Hoop Crew, LLC., Paul Seaver, will be running a 5 week non-contact skills and drills clinic for youth boys and girls entering grades 3-8!
Assisting him will be MHS basketball captains and alumni. Sessions will be restricted to 10 players per side of the court (2) so make sure your sign up quick! Sessions will run Monday through Friday starting July 13th and go through August 14th.
There will be 3 morning and evening sessions
available:
- 9:00 - 9:45am
- 10:00 - 10:45am
- 11:00 - 11:45am
- 4:00- 4:45pm
- 5:00 - 5:45pm
- 6:00 - 6:45pm
Sessions will begin and end promptly on time to allow for proper sanitization and transition between group entry. All sessions will be held at the Milford Youth Center, located at 24 Pearl Street, Milford, MA. The price is $15 per session and participants are welcome and encouraged to sign up for as many sessions per day and per week. Each player is required to register before sessions as there will be no walk-in registrations permitted! Each player must also bring their own basketball, water, and mask. A portion of each player's fee will be donated back to the Milford Youth Center! Check out
www.thehoopcrew.com for more information or email Paul Seaver at
[email protected]!
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Although we had to close our doors to the public 3 months early due to the current COVID-19 health crisis, we never stopped trying to connect and help the community. Although we were not be able to welcome our youth and families into the building, the Center adapted to the current situation to live up to its mission and vision and be a resource to the community as a whole.
Immediately, in collaboration with the Milford Board of Health and Milford TV, the Center started making mask kits for the community including over 600 masks kits for the free breakfast and lunch program at Memorial, 125 mask kits for the Senior Center's Meals on Wheels participants and numerous more to other town departments, organizations and individuals, amounting to over 1,000 masks!
Due to the generosity of Amazon, who weekly drops off car loads of their returned items, we have been able to deliver an estimated $15,000 worth of food, toiletry and pet food donations to community organizations who are distributing emergency needs and weekly care packages for some of our senior volunteers. We have become the liaison between Amazon and the community to get these items to those who are most in need and vulnerable.
In addition, with the help of the Milford Police Department and the Special Ops team and the Milford Highway Department, we began delivering donated gifts from Amazon and the United Way of Tri-County and their "Project Toy Box" Campaign. Amazon items are used for Birthday deliveries and United Way gifts are delivered to youth in our program who are most in need. We delivered gifts to over 100 youth since we started in April!
With the goal of keeping our youth active, we have also been hosting virtual programs on our social media/website and on all Milford TV platforms. We have been able to offer 1-2 programs a day, with over 90 programs as of now to choose from online and you can do right from your home.
Lastly, we have worked with teachers and our program youth to create messages of gratitude to our local medical staff at Milford Regional Medical Center, Senior population and to first responders.
Finally, we have been working with the Town and the Federal Census Bureau to spread the importance to complete the 2020 Census. We have distributed printing materials with our mask kits along with Census water bottles and bags with gift deliveries. We will continue to provide our current services and work with our community partners to provide the resources and needs of our youth and families as best we can as we start the re-opening process! Together, as a community, we will get through this very precarious situation and we have hope and confidence that we will be back stronger and more collaborative that ever!
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Volunteer Spotlight: Darlene Dulude!
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We are always looking for ways to thank our community and especially our volunteers! This month we would like to recognize the efforts of Darlene Dulude!
There really is no specific volunteer activity that Darlene Dulude does not do for the Milford Youth Center...she does it all! Darlene came to us a little over four years ago, after her husband became one of our volunteers.
Darlene does everything we ask of her in addition to the many unexpected acts of kindness and generosity! Darlene volunteers for
many of our After-School Programs,
was a former volunteer for the Milford Summer Food Service Program, as well as volunteering at our youth events in the evenings and helping with fundraisers and numerous other miscellaneous activities.
This year Darlene has helped with weekly Arts & Crafts and Nutrition programs, taking photos of programming and making beautiful scrapbook quality photos to share to our social media accounts, attending/ assisting with all of our events from Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hope for the Holidays, and even helping us to this day by preparing several raffle baskets for our upcoming Virtual Community Telethon July 10th from 3-8 p.m.! Finally, Darlene also joined our Youth Commission last year to help support our efforts even further! Thank you, Darlene!
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We Need You(th) Pale Ale Available for Month of July at CraftRoots Brewery!
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We are so excited to announce that CraftRoots will be continuing the sale of their "We Need You(th)" pale ale for the month of July! This special beer was brewed in May to raise funds for the MYC! For every purchase of a 32 oz squealer, $1 will be donated to the Center! Now that they are open they will also donate $0.50 from every pint ordered too! Finally, CraftRoots will be matching the proceeds made from this two month fundraiser!
We are so appreciative of our amazing community partner, CraftRoots, who reached out to help the Center back in May to find a way to support the Center during his difficult time. With no rental programs for the last 3 and half months and the postponed 10th Annual St. Pat's Fundraiser, our largest event of the year, Maureen and Robin, came up with this awesome idea to help support our program! Stop by CraftRoots for beer to-go or enjoy it in the taproom or at their outside beer garden!
Send us photos of you picking up your squealer so we can make sure we can thank you! Send them to our email
here or post them on social media and tag CraftRoots and the Center! Thank you to everyone who went already during the month of June!
Thank you CraftRoots! We hope to set a new date soon for our fundraiser, when it is safe to do so!
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MYC After School Program
2019-2020 Recap!
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Although we ended sooner than expected, the Center still had over 6 months of programs and memories this school year, so we decided to put together a slideshow for everyone to see how much the kids mean to us! Click here to watch!
The mission and vision of the MYC is to work together with other community organizations to provide resources and opportunities for youth to make healthy decisions. The MYC works to provide local youth with the necessary activities and events that help them develop physically, mentally, socially and emotionally through their adolescent years. By providing Milford youth with these types of programs and a safe environment during the after-school hours and during our monthly events, we hope to address adolescent risk factors as well as promoting the partnership among community members to ensure a comprehensive vision and plan for the health of the youth in the town of Milford.
For this reason, we would like to thank all the families and volunteers who helped make our 2019-2020 After School Program such a success! We had over 490 registered After School members this year even with our doors closing to the public in March. We were also still able to offer over 35 different programs with help from our volunteers, staff and community partners! Some programs included boxing, fishing, knitting, gardening, nutrition, homework help, STEAM and Martial Arts, just to name a few! We even created over 90 virtual programs to allow our community access to different activities while we had to keep our doors closed during the COVID-19 stay at home order. Even when we could not have the kids in our building, we decided to create a way to celebrate them even at home! Starting in April we were able to deliver over 50 youth gifts provided by Amazon donations and the
United Way of Tri-County's "Project Toy Box." We wouldn't have been able to achieve this without the help of the Milford Police Department and the High Department, who helped us with gift giving parades to our members' homes to help bring joy where we could.
 We would also like to thank our over 100 after school volunteers for this year, hundreds more through our events, as well as all of our community partners! For example, we couldn't run many of our fitness programs without the support of the Milford Regional Medical Center! The
Milford Regional Medical Center funds the instructors for our programs, like POUND, Cardio Dance Jam and Fit Camp! We also served over 445 nutritional snacks, which is provided to members who participate in any of our physical fitness and/or nutritional programs.
 The Milford Youth Center is also so grateful and pleased to partner with Teacher's Driving Academy, who offers students a great program, at a reasonable price! We are very grateful for this partnership and the very appreciative of the estimated annual donation of over $20,000 each year, helping us to run a free after school program for the youth of Milford!
The Center also is able to offer a free snack and dinner to all after school members, due to the collaboration of CACFP
Hockomock Area YMCA,
Milford Area Humanitarian Coalition and the Milford School Food & Nutrition Services department! Due to this partnership, we have served over 9,390 dinners and snacks during this year's After-School program!
 A huge thank you to
Milford TV for continuously collaborating with us and helping us turn our entire After-School program into a virtual one. We could not have done any of our continued programming without your assistance! We look forward to continuing our collaboration with Milford TV during the Virtual Community Telethon set for July 10th!
Without all of our community support we would not have achieved this! We are so excited for our After-school program to grow with new volunteers and programs and can't wait to see what new and returning programs we offer next school year! Thank you everyone!
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MYC Receives Donated Landscaping!
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We would like to extend a HUGE thank you to Mike Volpe of ANP Bellingham for donating funds to have Nydam Landscaping come by last month to conduct some landscaping and clean-up which included: weed and trash removal, bed mulching, lawn irrigation and fertilization at the Youth Center entry way!
Mike has organized this type of clean-up for the last few years to help the Center upkeep the front entrance area. This area was completely transformed in 2016, as a joint community project with ANP Bellingham Energy Company, LLC, Consigli Construction, and Nydam Landscaping. The project included: removal of old grass and relocating of rocks, sod and turf, new tree and pruning of existing tree, placement of memorial pavers, 3 granite benches, and new plants and flowers. We are so grateful of your continued support!
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| MYC Thanks Community for Donations: |
The Youth Center would like to extend a very appreciative thank you to the following list who donated items and/or their time this month to the Center:
The Youth Center relies on donations to help sustain our programs! Please contact the Center if you would like to donate or click here.
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Milford Summer Grab & Go Lunch Program
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- Free lunch for all kids ages eighteen and under between 10:30am and 1:00pm
- Monday through Friday, beginning June 18 and ending August 28, 2020.
- No advanced sign-up or paperwork required to drive up to the school and receive a grab & go breakfast and lunch.
For more information on local food access, click here
.
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Teachers Driving Academy (TDA) Update!
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The Teacher's Driving Academy (TDA) would like to share the following update: The RMV has allowed for web-based classroom instruction up until the end of August, during this time of the COVID-19 crisis. Many schools throughout the state may not be ready to support the web-based option at this time but here at TDA, we are ready to GO! We are offering the classroom instruction via web-cam for 5 weeks in a row. The only thing at this point that the RMV will not allow online is the FINAL EXAM. They are stating that this has to be done in person. We are CONFIDENT that this will change as this policy was just instituted a few days ago. The fee is only $119 and includes fee to RMV for your driver's education certificate. Click here to register for web-based virtual classroom. If you were already enrolled in for the standard classroom session, you can now switch to a virtual web-based format by clicking here.
Important Info:
- Virtual Web Based classes are Monday thru Friday, 10am-4pm
- On Tuesday of each week at 5pm, there will be a web-based parent class
- For all information visit the website here or email here.
The Milford Youth Center is pleased to partner with Teachers Driving Academy, who offers students a great program, at a reasonable price! We are very grateful for this partnership and the very appreciative of the estimated annual donation of over $25,000 each year!
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2020 Census: Easy, Safe and Important!
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 The results of the 2020 Census will help determine how hundreds of billions of dollars in federal funding flow into communities every year for the next decade. That funding shapes many different aspects of every community, no matter the size, no matter the location.
Think of your morning commute: Census results influence highway planning and construction, as well as grants for buses, subways, and other public transit systems.
Or think of your local schools: Census results help determine how money is allocated for the Head Start program and for grants that support teachers and special education.
The list goes on, including programs to support rural areas, to restore
wildlife, to prevent child abuse, to prepare for wildfires, and to provide housing assistance for older adults. Curious about what other programs are impacted by census data? Download this report to see a full list.
As of June 30th, the self-response rate percentage for the town of Milford is at 67.8%, compared to Massachusetts at 63.9% andWorcester County at 65.6%.
The non-response follow up phase" sending census takers to visit addresses of those who didn't respond on their own" will start August 11 - October 31! You can check the percentage changes on a daily basis on this link
here
.
For more information on the Census, click
here
. For a PowerPoint on info on the Census, click here.
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Milford Youth Center
Newsletter
July 2020
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 Check out our MYC Apparel! |
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Darlene Dulude & Sandra Caproni 
