Montgomery County Awardees and Supporting Returning Citizens at MCAP
In May, the Maryland Community Action Partnership convened for an in-person Human Services conference for the first time in three years. Among the many achievements celebrated by Community Action Agencies in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Delaware, three Montgomery County residents were recognized for their work to lift community members out of poverty and towards self-sufficiency.
Albert Reed, a 2020 Community Advocacy Institute graduate, participated in a reentry panel discussion. Mr. Reed has participated in MCAP’s Returning Citizens Workgroup throughout the year, addressing issues impacting returning citizens and how to improve services to address the needs of community members. Mr. Reed has been actively engaged in addressing community issues since completing the CAI, joining the County’s Reimagining Public Safety Task Force and the Commission on Children and Youth. The panelists shared insights on the issues that impact returning citizens from those with lived experience, advocates, and service providers. The panelists were (above, left to right) Christopher Dews, Policy Advocate at Job Opportunities Task Force, Andrea Thomas, President and CEO at United Planning Organization, Tanisha Murden, Program Director at Women Involved in Reentry Efforts (The WIRE), and Albert Reed of Albert Reed & Associates.
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Sharon Friedman, a leader in community advocacy in Montgomery County, has worked tirelessly to move the Community Action Board's workforce development and early childhood education advocacy priorities. Her innovation and advocacy to assure early childhood education is accessible, affordable and sustainable has resulted in legislation to establish an ECE entity agency that will coordinate all county-wide ECE programs and funding across systems. Ms. Friedman and Montgomery Moving Forward were recognized with an MCAP Partner Award.
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Community Action Board Vice Chair, Lisette Orellana Engel, was honored with the Volunteer of the Year award at the MCAP conference. Ms. Orellana Engel has been actively engaged in the board’s work since her appointment in 2017, including testifying before County Council and participating in the board’s Nominating and Awards Committees. Ms. Orellana Engel participates in the board’s advocacy training program for lower-income County residents, the Community Advocacy Institute, helping to plan the program, interviewing applicants, leading workshops, and serving as a mentor to participants. Drawing from her own experience as an Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) recipient, Ms. Orellana Engel is a tireless advocate for tax credits that provide critical support to families. She spoke on behalf of the board at an EITC Awareness Day event held with the Montgomery County Council and has promoted the agency’s Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program. Outside of her work with the board, Ms. Orellana Engel volunteered to serve as the keynote speaker at Montgomery College’s Single Parent Conference. She is also the co-founder of the #NoTeenShame campaign, a virtual movement that seeks to improve messaging around teen parenthood and reproductive justice and supports organizations that help empower single parents.
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To raise awareness about the tremendous expansions to the federal and state Earned Income Tax Credits, the Montgomery County’s Working Families Income Supplement, and the federal Child Tax Credit, the Community Action Agency initiated an outreach campaign targeting eligible residents. In December 2021, the campaign kicked off in collaboration with the County Executive’s Office and all the County’s Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) partners, discussing plans for the tax season and coordinating efforts. Campaign activities to promote the tax credits continued throughout the tax season and beyond, including one hundred and eleven RideOn bus signs in seven languages, signs in English and Spanish for 311 and Montgomery County Public Libraries digital monitors, training for Montgomery County Department of Health and Human Services staff and nonprofits, interviews in English and Spanish with local media outlets, a bilingual article in the Montgomery County Public Schools Quicknotes newsletter, and a well-attended Facebook event conducted in Spanish, hosted in collaboration with the Latino Health Initiative.
The campaign also included text messaging targeted to eligible households. Over 155,000 messages were sent in three waves, both in English and Spanish. Messages directed residents to websites with detailed information about tax credits and free filing software. The third message linked parents to websites with information on how to claim the Child Tax Credit. The websites, in English and Spanish, were developed by Code for America in collaboration with the White House and U.S. Department of Treasury.
In addition to these efforts, the agency’s VITA program was invited to a special CTC Awareness Day event at the White House on February 8. Community Action’s Executive Director, Sharon Strauss, attended, along with longtime VITA volunteer and contractor, Sharron Holquin, who introduced Vice President Kamala Harris.
Since July 2021, Community Action’s VITA program has served 1,330 Montgomery County households. The tax season started with all-virtual services, due to health and safety concerns, and was changed to a hybrid in-person and virtual model in mid-March. In-person services were offered in Rockville, at the Casey Center in Gaithersburg, and at WorkSource Montgomery in Wheaton, in partnership with United Way's Financial Empowerment Center and CAFE Montgomery MD. A dedicated group of VITA volunteers—who spoke Farsi, Russian, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Taiwanese, Cantonese and Mandarin—contributed 2,670 hours to the program. Montgomery residents received more than $5,583,548 in refunds and credits, including more than $2,562,815 million in federal, state and local combined tax credits.
 On May 24, the Community Action Board celebrated the twenty-one graduates of this year’s Community Advocacy Institute at a special outdoor ceremony at Bohrer Park in Gaithersburg. The class this year is the largest to date, and the first to be offered in Spanish as well as English. Participants attended monthly workshops about various advocacy issues, including working with elected officials, advocacy issues, storytelling, letter-writing, developing testimony, public speaking, and research. Graduates also completed an advocacy project, with thirteen participants testifying before County Council at budget hearings and eight participants submitting written testimony.
The graduation ceremony included remarks from County Executive Marc Elrich (at left); Council President Gabe Albornoz; Council Vice President Evan Glass; Councilmember Sidney Katz; former Gaithersburg City Councilmember Laurie-Anne Sayles; Betty Lam, Chief of the Office of Community Affairs, Montgomery County Department of Health and Human Services; and Sharon Strauss, Community Action’s Executive Director. Community Action Board Chair Tiffany Jones led the ceremony, with help from CAB members Valerie Chatfield-Smith and Myriam Paul. Each graduate shared their personal statement, describing what the program has meant to them, their plans for the future, and their top advocacy issues. Read more about the CAI graduation and view event pictures on the Community Action website and Facebook page.
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 Over three days this month, Eduardo Mendes, Program Specialist with the Community Action Agency’s Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program, joined colleagues from the University of Baltimore law program, the Maryland Volunteer Law Association, and the CASH Campaign of Maryland to provide free tax preparation services for agricultural workers on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. An attorney from Maryland Low Income Taxpayer Clinics (LITCs) and an accounting professor at the University of Baltimore alerted area service providers that several taxpayers had been victimized by a fraudulent paid tax preparer. The LITCs partnered with Centro De los Derechos Del Migrante, Inc., based in Mexico, to educate the workers and to support outreach about their rights and about the tax preparation opportunity. Workers in the crab and poultry industries come to Maryland on H-2B employer-sponsored visas, and after working in the USA for 183 days, are required to file tax returns.
Delmarva Community Services, Inc., our sister Community Action Agency in Cambridge, coordinated the delivery of services at the Hooper’s Island volunteer fire house of Dorchester County. In addition to free tax help, the taxpayers had the opportunity to access the other resources, including receiving food donations. According to Mr. Mendes, many of the workers are subsisting on $100 per week and charged $60 per week for shared housing, leaving a net $40 for food and other expenses, including supporting their families in their home countries.
“All the clients we served were receiving a refund, an average of $300 to $500 in the federal return,” Mr. Mendes said. Community Action is grateful to Mr. Mendes’s work on the program, and the collaboration that brought partnering organizations together to assist the workers on which our agricultural system depends.
On May 16, Community Action’s Navigators and staff from the Takoma-East Silver Spring (TESS) Community Action Center, along with the Montgomery County Department of Health and Human Services Newcomers Program and Mass Care Team, welcomed forty people in approximately sixteen families to a DHHS shelter. Colleagues prepared to open the shelter the day before, setting up beds, cleaning office spaces, planning the flow of how families would be received and served. The newcomers had started this leg of their journey from the U.S. border in Arizona and landed in the National Capitol area after a forty-hour bus ride.
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The DHHS team provided respite from the newcomers’ journey with warm meals, showers, beds, and friendly faces. The Navigators and TESS staff assisted in registering the families with the shelter and booking flights and buses to their next destination where they would reunite with their families and friends.
Pictured at top, left to right, are CARES Navigation Program Coordinator Monica Goldberg with Navigators Karey Bell, Pamela Medina, and Gabriela Salazar, catching a moment after shelter set-up and before the newcomers arrived. Ms. Goldberg is also pictured above with Navigator Ziel Luna, ready to check in newcomers to the shelter.
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