The Montgomery Area United Way held its annual meeting on Jan. 29 at the Montgomery City Public Library with nine agencies in attendance, plus the United Way board members.

Dan Cole of the Development Disabilities Assistance Board, Bethany Wilemon of Birthright, Janet Stumbaugh of NRG Packs, Shellie Ramsour and Carey Westerman of NECAC, Kari Terrill of Montgomery County Head Start/Early Head Start, Jim Ohrberg and Jim Guffie of Montgomery County Cares, R-II school nurse Jessica Fredrick, Valerie Johnson of VOYCE and Lauren Frost and Wende Ochoa of Turning Point Advocacy Services were the attendees. All of the agencies are funded by the United Way. Lunch was served before all of the attendees spoke about their agencies.

NRG Packs is celebrating its 10-year anniversary this year. The organization has volunteers pack bags of food once a month for the nine months of the school year, making sure that students in the Montgomery County R-II School District have food to eat.

“In our 10 years, we sent out about 44,000-45,000 bags of food to kids in our district,” Stumbaugh said. “We’re very fortunate that the Montgomery County Health Department allows us to use the basement. That’s where we store the food and that’s where we do our packing.”

NRG Packs serves all of the schools in the county, including Immaculate Conception School. Stumbaugh said the organization pays $20,000 a year for food.

“We want to come back to school on Tuesday not starving but ready to learn so we can have protective citizens here in the county,” Stumbaugh said.

Johnson works as a regional ombudsman coordinator. She visits nursing homes in all of Northeast Missouri, including Montgomery County. She joined the VOYCE staff in October.

“I retired from the State of Missouri sometime ago,” Johnson said. “I told my boss when he hired me that the worst thing that will happen is that they may mistake me for a resident because I’m by far the oldest person working there. But I’m not done. I feel like I have a lot left.”

Wilemon gave a yearly report for Birthright, which is a nonprofit organization in Montgomery City that provides emergency care to pregnant women.

“As of the end of December 2023, Birthright had 42 mothers and 43 children that we are serving,” Wilemon said. “Birthright provides encouragement and support for pregnant women and their families. In addition to that, each new baby gets a layette when they’re born.”

Ohrberg said Montgomery County Cares served 102 families in 2023, down from 150 from the year before.

“The demand has come down a little bit since the COVID stuff,” Ohrberg said. “But it has given us the opportunity to put more towards the bills that they need assistance with because we have less people coming in.”

Terrill is in her fourth year as operations director at Montgomery County Head Start/Early Head Start, which is located in Montgomery City. It provides early childhood services to children ages 0-5 and prenatal moms.

“Last year, we served 89 kids,” Terrill said. “That’s a little bit lower than normal. We usually have over 100 kids. But when I think about it, that also sends stability a lot of times when we go over our normal amount of kids because we had kids move in and out more often.”