NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — NBT Bank awarded the North Adams Public Schools with a check of $1,000 to go towards the School 2025 Book Fair Initiative.

 

"[The money] will allow for pre-K through six students to have a $7 book voucher, and to some students, it means everything to pick out their very first book and be able to have a book that they can take home," said Carrie Burnett, the city's grants, special projects and procurement officer.

 

The district's goal is to raise $5,000 to help more than 715 low-income families with students in prekindergarten through sixth grade.

 

NBT Bank's North Adams branch manager Al Bedini Jr. gifted the check to Burnett and said it's important to help the community.

 

"We're trying to get our name back in the community here, NBT, so it's just a good opportunity. It's a good program to work with the North Adams Public Schools," Bedini said.

 

The check was given out Wednesday night during a North Adams Chamber of Commerce mixer hosted by NBT Bank.

 

The chamber's chair, Aaron Oster, said the chamber means a lot to local businesses. He was happy that it was once again getting more involved in the community, reflecting on the grant it received in 2021 to help businesses in the area.

 

"The Chamber of Commerce during the pandemic was undergoing a little bit of a transition, going from a membership-based program to actually doing, getting back to its original version, which was doing the outreach, doing the technical assistance work, helping the community in a more person to person way than had done previously," he said.

 

The chamber partnered with the Franklin County Community Development Corp. to help businesses struggling in the pandemic.

 

"We hired a full-time employee to focus on outreach and building those assessments, and we've been doing it now for three years, and starting to really expand the type of work that we're doing to try to reach as many businesses as we can," Oster said.

 

Oster said the chamber hired Nico Dery, who connected with the businesses.

 

"It was going door to door. It was about building relationships with every business within the community and trying to assess and then connect those needs with another professional who was focused on that, whether it's bookkeeping or construction or legal advice or whatever that was, what we were able to help them through. We helped people figure out their paperwork for liquor licenses or getting a business opened or expanding or growing. It was a lot of really incredible work," Oster said.