Over $9M in federal grants awarded to northern NH businesses for childcare, infrastructure

U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen and the New Hampshire congressional delegation announced that 21 grantees received $9.3 million in federal funding from the Northern Border Regional Commission.

Businesses, nonprofits, and state agencies received grants to improve outdoor recreation and tourism, childcare, educational programs, sanitation, workforce development, and more. 

“For nearly two decades, the Northern Border Regional Commission has been a critical partner in strengthening our state’s rural communities through federal investment and economic development,” Shaheen said in a press release Friday. “It is great to see this new funding released, which will invest in our workforce, fund infrastructure improvements, enhance outdoor recreation and forest industries, support New Hampshire’s rural health care system, increase the supply of affordable child care and so much more.”

The Northern Border Regional Commission is a federal-state partnership formed to “help alleviate distress” through economic and community development in New Hampshire, Maine, New York, and Vermont’s “hard-hit” northern counties. In New Hampshire, Belknap, Carroll, Cheshire, Coös, Grafton, Merrimack, and Sullivan counties are considered to be in the Northern Border region. 

In West Lebanon, the Boys and Girls Club of Central and Northern New Hampshire was awarded $1 million to build a 5,400-square-foot childcare facility with 50 new slots for infant-to-pre-K care.

Evergreen Start, under the Coös Directors Network, was awarded $500,000 to “deploy shared back-office infrastructure” aimed at stabilizing and expanding licensed childcare capacity in Coös, Grafton, and Carroll counties over three years. 

Across the four states in the commission, over $45.4 million in grants were awarded.