It’s hard to believe that here on Cape Cod, where vacationers come from all over the world, local people are going hungry, families are homeless, and working people are unable to afford the basic necessities of life. A combination of low wages, seasonal cutbacks, and a severe lack of affordable housing makes life here very difficult for hundreds of households.
That’s why we ask you to make a tax-deductible contribution to Lower Cape Outreach Council’s Summer of Hope campaign, your chance to make a difference in the lives of people who are as essential to the character of Cape Cod as the sun and the ocean.
In the past year, nearly 1,700 households, from Harwich to Provincetown, turned to the Lower Cape Outreach Council for help. We provided them with $1,367,572 of food, clothing, and emergency financial assistance to help them hold on to their homes, pay for heat, prevent utility shut offs, meet medical expenses, and repair the boats, trucks, and automobiles that are so essential to making a living. Beyond that, we have a full service jobs program here in our Orleans headquarters with tuition assistance for clients who wish to improve their job skills or pursue alternative directions in their work.
Our clients are young families trying to establish their lives on Cape Cod, service industry workers trapped in $9 to $12 hourly wage jobs, young people who are out of school and out of work, homeless people who sleep in their cars or in the woods, fishing families caught in a net of regulations and decreasing opportunities, seniors and the disabled who live on fixed incomes.
If you live here all year long or seasonally, if you’re a vacationer who returns again and again, please send a tax-deductible contribution to Lower Cape Outreach Council today. Then watch the progress of Summer of Hope in The Cape Codder every Friday through July and August. You’ll find case studies of people we help as well as listings of our contributors.