Love INC aims to help the community

A new non–profit organization is coming to the Central Upper Peninsula.

It is called Love In the Name of Christ (Love INC), an organization that unites churches to help meet the needs of local residents.  Friday night, they held a kick–off event to start the organization.

Love INC has 155 affiliates in 30 states.  This will be the first affiliate in the U.P.

Love INC works with community resources to provide needs of community members.  They have a clearing house, which allows someone to contact the group instead of individual churches.

“Churches that are involved can refer them to Love INC and we would have volunteers that would field those calls and pair them up with a church or organization, or already existing agency in the community that would be able to help them with whatever that need is,” Kristy Basolo, Co-chair of the Love INC CUP Development team said.

Ten churches in Marquette County will be part of Love INC, and twelve more are interested in joining.

Basolo says having so many churches involved shows the support Marquette County residents have for community members.

“To have another dozen churches that interested and that are looking into pledging some help to us too is very reassuring that this something that will be good for the community, and that we can pick up and run with it with all the churches involved,” she said.

The next step in the process is moving from a development team to creating a governing board, hire an executive director, and do a needs survey of the community.