“It seems we are seeing a larger group of people contacting us as the economy is getting tighter,” Dunbar says. “While we’re getting more demand for our services, we are getting more of our funding cut by the state when we need it the most.”

While the county’s service groups are working together to help people more, they are somewhat in trouble themselves.

“As money gets tighter, it’s more cost effective to have us all under one umbrella,” Dunbar says. “It just makes more sense for everyone.”

First Call for Help merged with United Way of Portage County during Dunbar’s tenure there, and that has made the service more reliable and more effective than when it was operating on little funding, she says.

“It helps us out, and them out, if we combine our resources more when we need it the most,” McKinney says.

A major source of funding for the King-Kennedy Center in the past has been the check-off box on the bottom of Kent State tuition forms for a $2 donation. The box has appeared since 1971. It helped the center get started and provide services to the community.

“We get about $1,000 to $1,200 a year now from the check-off box,” McKinney says. “It seems to go down every year.”

Students also play a hands-on role at the center through a group called Students for King-Kennedy, which spends time volunteering there.

McKinney has a vision of turning the center into a place run by students where they can learn skills that apply to their majors, including computer technology, education and business management.

“The students at Kent State helped start this center,” McKinney says. “It’d be nice if they could help it even more now, when it needs it the most.”

Miller says they can pay for about half of someone’s utility bill once a year due to budget restraints, but she says groups in the community are working together to help people as much as they can. Groups such as the United Way and Family and Community Services of Portage County have worked together to help people pay their utilities, put food on their plates and, most importantly, get a job.

“We try and get people back into the work force as soon as we can,” Miller says. “If they can’t find a job, we try to make one for them.”

Catholic Charities has a coffee shop next to its office for those in need of a job. The group hires people who need to log in hours to receive welfare benefits and provides training to help them get a steady job in the future. However, people cannot stay long because others are waiting for the position.

“I’d say most of the people who come to us for help already have a job,” Miller says. “They just can’t make enough to support their family. There just doesn’t seem to be enough opportunity in the area.”

First Call for Help of Portage County, a service of the United Way that directs people to appropriate aid organizations, has seen an influx of calls in recent months.

“Forty-two percent of the calls First Call for Help received last year were from people seeking basic human needs like food, shelter, clothing, utilities and transportation,” says Erin Dunbar, director of First Call. “Many of the people need the help because they’ve just been laid off or are unable to work.”

First Call is finding evidence of increased poverty in the county, similar to what Catholic Charities has noticed.