Rockingham Community Action

Southern New Hampshire Services (SNHS) is a private non-profit corporation chartered in the State of New Hampshire, May 21, 1965 to serve as the Community Action Partnership for Hillsborough County in compliance with the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964. From 1965 through 1969, SNHS was known as the Community Action Agency for Hillsborough County and served the City of Nashua and the twenty-nine towns. In 1969 SNHS became the Community Action Partnership for the City of Manchester as well. In 1974 the agency’s name was changed to Southern New Hampshire Services. In July 2011, Rockingham Community Action (RCA), the Community Action Agency serving Rockingham County, was merged with Southern New Hampshire Services. As a result of this merger, SNHS now provides services to residents of the 66 towns and 2 cities in Hillsborough and Rockingham Counties.

The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 and subsequent federal legislation establishing the Community Services Block Grant define our basic mission. Under these provisions the fundamental mission of SNHS is:

A.   To provide a range of services and activities having a measurable and potentially major impact on causes of poverty in the community or those areas of the community where poverty is a particularly acute problem.

B.    To Provide activities designed to assist low-income participants including homeless individuals and families, migrants, and the elderly poor to:

1.     Secure and retain meaningful employment;

2.     Attain and adequate education;

3.     Make better use of available income;

4.     Obtain and maintain adequate housing and a suitable living environment;

5.     Obtain emergency assistance through loans or grants to meet immediate and urgent individual and family needs, including the need for health services, nutritious food, housing, and employment related assistance;

6.     Remove obstacles and solve problems which block the achievement of self-sufficiency;

7.     Achieve greater participation in the affairs of the community, and;

8.     Make more effective use of other programs related to the purposes of the enabling Federal legislation.

C.    To Provide on an emergency basis for the provision of such supplies and services, nutritious foodstuffs, and related services, and may be necessary to counteract condition of starvation and malnutrition among the poor.

D.   To coordinate and establish linkages between governmental and other social service programs to assure the effective delivery of such services to low-income individuals.

E.    To encourage the use of entities in the private sector of the community in efforts to ameliorate poverty in the community.