© 2024 WVIK
Listen at 90.3 FM and 98.3 FM in the Quad Cities, 95.9 FM in Dubuque, or on the WVIK app!
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Community

Happy Birthday Project NOW

A long fight against poverty in the Quad Cities is being celebrated this week. Tuesday is the 50th birthday of Project NOW which provides services in Rock Island, Henry, and Mercer counties.

Executive Director, Mo Hart, says her staff of 130 people helps about 12,000 households a year, or about 25,000 people.

"Everything from Head Start - educating children to attend kindergarten, preparing 3 to 5 year olds for kindergarten - to senior services such as delivering home-delivered means, senior transport, and we also weatherize homes."

The agency was created during the turmoil of the 1960's, in fact just one month after the assassination of Martin Luther King Junior. And the name "now" stands for Neighborhood Outreach Work."

Hart says it's mission probably won't change much in the coming years. 

"How you provide the service might change, technology certainly changes things, but the basic needs of people, when that flares up, they need people who can listen to them, meet with them face to face. We still put a priority on that."

 
Project NOW is one of nearly 1,000 Community Action Agencies across the country, offering programs for affordable housing, utility assistance, clothing, and meal sites and meals on wheels. 

A native of Detroit, Herb Trix began his radio career as a country-western disc jockey in Roswell, New Mexico (“KRSY, your superkicker in the Pecos Valley”), in 1978. After a stint at an oldies station in Topeka, Kansas (imagine getting paid to play “Louie Louie” and “Great Balls of Fire”), he wormed his way into news, first in Topeka, and then in Freeport Illinois.