Imagine having your furnace go out during a winter cold snap and not having the financial resources to repair it or a place to stay until it is repaired. Imagine having a loved one suffer a massive heart attack and be hospitalized for several weeks in Madison, but not having reliable transportation to get there to visit her. Imagine having to relocate to a new home quickly due to a tragedy occurring in your apartment building. We don’t need to imagine these, as they are all unfortunate situations that neighbors in Waunakee experienced this past year.

So that we, as a community, can better respond to family crises such as these, Waunakee Community Bank and Waunakee Neighborhood Connection have partnered to create the “Neighbor to Neighbor Family Crisis Program.” In the wake of these, and other, events and seeing their impact on families in our community, the need for a localized fund and volunteer response team to assist families both financially and emotionally in the middle of an emergency is apparent now more than ever before.

The Neighbor-to-Neighbor fund covers some, or all, of the immediate expenses a family is subject to and, most importantly, the funds will be deployed within a 24-hour period…during the time that those families need access to money the most. A team of specially trained volunteers will then help the family to coordinate the services they may need as they respond to and recover from the crisis.