Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

On Wednesday morning, the City of LaGrange and the LaGrange-Troup County Chamber of Commerce held a ribbon cutting for the new Resource Center at city hall. 

The resource center computer kiosk is set up on the bottom floor of city hall, next to the utilities office. It’s the first of many planned locations throughout the county to provide access to the new Troup County Resource website.

The new resource website is a web portal that provides access to links to non-profit resources within Troup County. 

The web portal provides links to a wide array of non-profit resources that are available throughout the county from emergency, family and resources to jobs and education.

Councilman Jim Arrington explained that the website is a free resource with links to free services that are offered in the community. It’s a list of nonprofits and other organizations that with all of the information in one place, Arrington said.

Arrington said he hopes the endeavor will help those in need throughout Troup, not just LaGrange.

“It’s not just for the City of LaGrange, but it’s for West Point, Hogansville, LaGrange and rural Troup County,” Arrington said.

For those with web access, the web portal can be found at www.troupcountyresources.com. Computers will also be set up throughout the community to provide access to the site. 

“It’s located in city hall on the lower level where you pay utility bills. There’ll be a computer there that can only used for the resource website,” Arrington said. “They’re open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.”

“It took a lot of time, a lot of effort, and months to put this together,” Arrington said, noting Councilman Quay Boddie has led the project.

Boddie said the idea came from an idea to put up bulletin boards with information on resources that could help members of the community. 

“I reached out to former city manager Meg Kelsey and asked her if we could build some bulletin boards in neighborhoods. My idea was to put fliers on the bulletin boards with information about resources that would help our community,” Boddie said. 

“Me being me, I was ready to buy the wood and get to work on building those bulletin boards. But Meg suggested that we do a little bit more. After months of research, we realized that the best way to serve our community was to create a website with all of our nonprofits and organizations that help our community,” Boddie said.

When you go to the website, troupcountyresources.com, you will find a simple site with tabs on a variety of resource categories including clothing, emergency resources, election information, family resources, education resources, newcomer information, food resources, jobs, medical & mental health, housing & utilities, transportation and veteran services.

Boddie said the website will be updated with new resources as they become available.

 

“Any nonprofit organization who wants to be added to the website can do so at any time as long as you’re offering a service that will help people in Troup County,” he said.

Boddie said to contact marketing and communications specialist Olivia Johnson at city hall to be added to the website.

The city has 17 computers that were donated by Kids Zone Dentistry in LaGrange that will serve as kiosks to access the website throughout the county. In addition to the city hall kiosk, computers will be placed at the William Griggs Recreation Center and the Mike Daniel Recreation Center. The city is currently working to finalize locations for the kiosks in Hogansville and West Point.

Mayor Willie Edmondson is also planning to meet with non-profit leaders at Dev’Avant on Feb. 19 at noon to collaborate with local non-profits and discuss community efforts, as well as the needs of non-profit organizations and those they serve.