The Little Compton Community Center and Historical Society have each received $10,000 in grants from the Rhode Island Foundation’s Newport County Fund. The funds will help the organizations

The community center grant will help support its senior lunch program, in which volunteers prepare meals for pick up, home delivery and serve them in the dining room. While the program has always seen consistent enrollment, Samantha Snow, the center's communications director, said that since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic it has grown dramatically.

"Now we typically serve between 35 and 50 meals every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, for a weekly average of around 130 meals. This has risen from a weekly average of around 60 meals per week in 2019."

Since pandemic restrictions have relaxed, the organization has returned to serving meals in the center's dining room. In addition, meals can be served outdoors on the facility’s patio during the summer. Snow said that as important as the nourishment it provides is the socialization and companionship it offers to users. The dining room, she said, "encourages invaluable social interaction and engagement. Delivering meals to home-bound seniors is part of the web of caring people who ensure no one in our community falls through the cracks."

Historical society

The historical society's grant will be used to research the history of the indigenous people of the area as part of its "History of the Sakonnet People" project.

"We'll bring on experts in the Wampanoag language, Wampanoag genealogy research and historic surveying techniques to guide us in our research of the Sakonnet people, the original inhabitants of what is now Little Compton," said Marjory O'Toole, the society's executive director.

Organization members plan to share the results of the research with the public via a book, a special exhibition and a series of public programs in 2025, the 350th anniversary of the English settlement of Sakonnet, now Little Compton.

 "We will focus on Sakonnet genealogy as a way to help understand the history of the Sakonnets and make connections to living Sakonnet descendants. We are currently unaware of any living Indigenous person who identifies as Sakonnet, but the historic record suggests there must be hundreds of Sakonnet descendants living today," O'Toole said.

Among the other non-profits that serve Little Compton and will benefit from Rhode Island Foundation grants are Meals On Wheels, Visiting Nurse Home and Hospice and the Katie Brown Educational Program, which provides evidence-based, relationship violence prevention education in Little Compton schools.