BOARD OF DIRECTORS & STAFF
Maine Needs is a volunteer-led effort. In 2022, we hired our first paid employee in the role of Communications Director. In 2023, we welcomed our second staff member in the role of Chief Operations Officer. All other roles and responsibilities are carried through by the generous efforts of volunteers from the community. We are fortunate to have the support of so many people who are committed to making our shared community a better place for all.
Bonnie Harlow (she/her)
Bonnie has worked in the social services and education fields for more than 40 years. Her career includes in-home parent support for families of children with autism, Head Start family services, elementary special education teacher, and Director of Child Development Services/Sagadahoc County, part of the Maine state delivery of services to children birth to five with disabilities.
Bonnie has a BA in Community Leadership and Development and an MA in Family Counseling/Special Education. Bonnie recently retired and is fully committed to helping make Maine Needs a vital part of supporting the families and people of our communities and addressing the social issues we face today.
Bonnie manages the ever-growing crew of volunteers, shift schedules and coordinates deliveries to various County's. Bonnie is at Maine Needs several times a week and misses it deeply when she's away.
Betsy Tod (she/her)
In the summer of 2020 Betsy was looking for new volunteer opportunities within the greater Portland community. Through social media she came across Maine Needs and was intrigued by their unique vision to build community around support for the most basic needs of our greater community. The day Maine Needs opened she showed up to donate essentials, asked if they needed any help, stayed to help and has been volunteering weekly ever since.
Betsy has a professional background in sales and development and is a part time philanthropic advisor for a local Maine company. In addition to focusing on raising her family, Betsy spends much of her time on volunteering. She has worked with schools, libraries, food pantries and serves on the Board of a local school and community action agency. She is a weekly Shift Lead and volunteer at Maine Needs.
Betsy values Maine Needs as a unique organization that builds community without barriers, is open to all and opens our eyes to the good in the world around us.
Sanaa Abduljabbar (she/her)
Sanaa is originally from Iraq and has lived in Maine since 2010 with her husband, two sons and her sister. In Iraq, she was a middle and high school Biology teacher. She has been working as a community health worker at MAIN since 2015 and with The Opportunity Alliance since 2014 as Community Builder, serving as a bridge between Riverton Park residents ,their children, the schools, social and health services and other resources. Sanaa’s passion is serving people from different cultures and connecting them to the resources they need and deserve in the Greater Portland community .
From 2012 to 2015, Sanaa was a member of The Center for Grieving Children’s Intercultural Advisory Council (IAC), which provides services to members of the local refugee community who have experienced trauma from war or other events.
Sanaa has a B.S. in Biology and Education from The University Of Mosul / Iraq and speaks Arabic, Kurdish and English. She also has a graduate certificate from the LEND (Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities) program at University of New England.
Kaleigh Anderson (she/her)
Chief Operations Officer
Kaleigh Anderson has been an active with Maine Needs since day one.
A lifelong resident of Scarborough, Kaleigh knows firsthand the importance of community and the gap that Maine Needs help fill for those families in need. Her passion to help those in need is deeply-rooted in her through her life experiences. Growing up, Kaleigh and her family were the beneficiaries of community support, generosity, and empathy when their family lost their home and all personal belongings due to fire and again when their mother passed as a result of cancer. These experiences taught her the importance of a safe and stable home and access to community resources, like the Center for Grieving Children, a place where Kaleigh and her siblings were able to get support after the passing of their mother. Determined to give back to the community and to help children who have faced similar hardships, Kaleigh received a degree in Applied Science and began working in Family Medicine at Maine Medical Center. During Kaleigh’s time in Family Medicine at Maine Medical Center, she was on rotation working in different locations and communities weekly. In each community she worked, she was seeing children in need and families who were without basic essentials, struggling to make ends meet and looking for assurance and determination to carry on. In 2011, Kaleigh decided to pursue a career in finance. This career change afforded her the ability and means to spend more time with her young and growing family and volunteering to help those in her community who needed it most. In 2019, after reaching out to Angela Stone, Kaleigh’s involvement with Maine Baby (Maine Needs) at the Root Cellar began. Kaleigh’s involvement with Maine Baby/Maine Needs only further fueled her fire to give back to those in her community. In addition to helping transition Maine Needs to it’s own location (and expansion), Kaleigh helps organize volunteers, fulfill needs for case managers and families, fundraise and so much more. Through her time at Maine Needs, she has met so many wonderful people and families, including a family of 6 who is originally from Angola that she helps mentor and considers a 2nd family. In addition to her work at Maine Needs, Kaleigh is a member of the Church Outreach Team at Trinity Episcopal Church and has worked with them to establish Laundry Love, a National campaign to wash and dry laundry for low income individuals and families in Portland. When Kaleigh is not working or volunteering, you can usually find her spending time with her husband and 3 children, making oil paintings and looking for the next way to provide her community with love and support.
Tara Balch (she/her)
Communications Director
After following Maine Needs on social media, Tara went in for a volunteer shift on a Monday morning in early 2021. For the next year or so, she never missed a Monday!
While finishing up her B.S. in Social and Behavioral Science from USM, she took on an internship with Maine Needs. That experience gave her the confidence to apply for the role of Communications Director; a job she feels incredibly grateful to have landed.
Originally from the Philadelphia suburbs, Tara spent her twenties traveling and trying different locations on for size. After visiting Portland in 2013, she knew Maine would be the place she’d call home. She now lives in Windham with her partner and two sweet pups. She loves podcasts, pasta and every second of summertime in Maine.
Angela Stone (she/her)
Founder
Angela Stone is the founder of Maine Needs. She grew up in Scarborough, lived in Chicago for 13 years, then moved back to Cumberland in September 2018 with her Nebraskan husband and kids. The first 6 months of Maine Needs was headquartered in her garage.
Angela has zero background in nonprofit work or social work. She is an interior designer and a mother of three. Design exposed her to a world of excess, an abundance of resources and connections, while motherhood showed her what it felt like to feel helpless, vulnerable and uncomfortably reliant on others, yet fully responsible for the life of another human being.
Maine Needs was an emotional response to children being separated at the border from their parents. The combination of what Angela saw in design and felt in early motherhood led her to believe that an active community effort was all very possible if people only knew what was needed and were invited in to help in any capacity they could.
Maine Access Immigrant Network welcomed Angela in with open arms when she asked how she could help. They didn’t care that she didn’t have experience in social work, they shared the stories of immigrant families and what was needed most. She used local mom groups to get families with young children things they needed, such as baby clothes, diapers, cleaning supplies, pads, etc. Meeting these families led to creating a Facebook group and reaching out to other nonprofits and organizations to see what they needed too. The Maine Needs group served as a bulletin board and bridge for everyone to learn together about what was needed and where.
Maine Needs started with a focus on asylum seeking mothers. The mission then expanded to Maine families, unhoused neighbors, survivors of domestic violence and people leaving incarceration. The common thread became so clear, we all have the same basic needs. We all have needs and that doesn’t make us needy, it makes us human.
The goal was to utilize social media and the local community to establish a safety net for people who didn’t have one and redistribute quality resources, so that everyone could feel a bit more seen, more cared for and have their basic needs met at no cost. Maine Needs became a 4000 square foot community run donation center where caseworkers, street outreach teams, teachers and nurses can request basic material needs that individuals and families all over Maine are going without.
That safety net is now over 40,000 people, with over 3,000 volunteers, two full time employees and countless local businesses, schools, churches and people collecting, making essential care kits and fundraising on behalf of others. Stone also created 16 Better Together County Groups where people can post their needs directly and what they have to give locally, many of the groups have thousands of people giving daily. The ripple effect of Maine Needs is far beyond what can be tracked and they are growing each year. In fact, our mission has already more than outgrown it’s space and we are in need of a new building. Maine Needs is the result of a broken heart linked to many other hearts. It is asking for more of our community and seeing what happens.