Durango Residents Lead New Charity Effort

Two longtime Durango residents help community members in need. You’re watching the Local News Network, brought to you by krieger’s, ACE Hardware and m and R Plumbing. I’m Connor Shrieve. One need at a Time is a brand new philanthropic effort led by retired teacher and former state representative Barbara McLaughlin.

Mary Eddy, who’s a friend of mine, she’s a retired physician in town. We were talking after the election to say we would really like to do something to help the people in our area. People are going to be going through hard times if they’re losing their jobs, if they’re whatever. So we just decided, let’s do something. So we formed a very loosely organized group called One Need at a Time.

The two women choose a new beneficiary every three months.

The first one we did Ros and we raised money for them. The second wave was collecting books for kids K through five, and we collected about a thousand books and bought some from Maria’s and that we can distribute to elementary schools in Durango.

The group most recently turned its attention to Oaktree Youth Resources, a nonprofit supporting young people struggling with anything from homelessness to addiction, hunger, education, and more.

My husband and I were foster parents because of some young people we knew that needed a place to be. And it morphed into February of 2020, creating a space for young people aging out of foster care originally and saw such a need, and especially during that time, young people coming out of incarceration with no place to go. During COVID,

Oaktree founder Carrie Harrison says it’s grown into a full service nonprofit and has housed 126 kids since its inception. She credits the support from one need at a time for putting a spotlight on an issue that’s not always easily visible. One reason for that, according to Harrison, is that young people tend to struggle to ask for help.

Kids tend to drop out of school, they tend to struggle and possibly just want to check out and use substances. So we offer an opportunity for kids to come here, get some support, and realize they don’t have to turn to substance use, or maybe they can understand they do have somebody on their side, and it’s just taking those baby steps towards getting them back on the right track.

She says the help is appreciated, especially now with the uncertainty in federal funding sources. Feedback like that motivates McLaughlin to keep helping the community as one needed at a time, celebrates six months. McLaughlin is even more hopeful than when she started.

Every time we send out an email blast, we get a few people saying, can you add me to that? So, ’cause I’d like to donate for the next time. And if they can’t do it, they can’t do it. And if they can, they can. So it’s, there’s no, we’re not keeping records of who gives and who doesn’t give. It’s just people have really big hearts in Durango and Mary Gi, daddy and I have just figured that that’s what we’re latching onto, is how much people love their community and want to support people in the community.

Find more information about this and other stories at Durango Local News. Thanks for watching this edition of The Local News Network. I’m Connor Shrieve.