Merrimack College’s Hands to Help (Manos para Ayudar) is a neighborhood resource center whose mission is to enlighten minds, engage hearts and empower the lives of members of the Lawrence community.
Hands to Help
60 Island Street
Third Floor - Suite 320
Lawrence MA, 01840
Hours: 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Phone: 978-258-1632 | handstohelp@merrimack.edu
In 2015, Merrimack College partnered with St. Mary of the Assumption Parish in Lawrence, MA to found Hands to Help. A community resource center, Hands to Help’s goal is to assist and empower members of the Lawrence community. The center operates out of the Bell Tower Building in North Lawrence.
Hands to Help offers a number of services and events, including after-school tutoring, drop-in support, the Food Recovery Network, food outreach, and snack box preparation and distribution. Events include our signature Mack Gives back event, Lunch in Lawrence, drives for back-to-school supplies, Thanksgiving baskets, holiday toys, and more.
Mack Gives Back volunteers prepared 90,000 non-perishable meals for 10 local nonprofit organizations at its Nov. 2022 event.
Hands to Help’s 2023 school supply drive collected more than 3,500 items, including backpacks, notebooks and folders.
The Hands to Help team put together 1,257 snack boxes – more than 1500 pounds of food – for the 2022-23 academic year.
Learn more about the free services offered at Merrimack College’s Hands to Help.
The Hands to Help Tutoring Program was created by Merrimack College for the Lawrence community based on their needs. The Tutoring Program focuses on strengthening students’ academic achievement. Merrimack students work with students in 1st through 8th grade in all subjects, including math, science, social studies, reading, writing and more.
Tutoring Schedule: Monday – Thursday: 3-5:30 p.m.
Location: 60 Island St., Suite 320, Lawrence
Stop by Hands to Help for the following drop-in services:
Drop-in Schedule: Monday – Thursday: 9-5:30 p.m.
Location: 60 Island St., Suite 320, Lawrence
Visit the Food Recovery Network for more information.
In an effort to respond to the needs of the community and expand our existing efforts, Merrimack College has built a kitchen at Hands to Help with the purpose of providing free culturally appropriate food to hungry people.
Our goals are to:
With the installation of this kitchen, our student workers help pick up food donations at a local food bank and create a menu for the week based on the food that has been donated.
With the help of our ServSafe-certified staff, student volunteers cook culturally appropriate meals from scratch. The meals are delivered and either served or handed out to those at local community centers and public fridges.
Student volunteers have the opportunity to learn basic food safety guidelines and principles from our ServSafe-certified staff. Students also have the opportunity to put into practice theories learned in their nutrition-related courses. In addition, our student volunteers get to visit Lawrence and hand out meals at the local community center.
As a non-profit organization that fights to end food insecurity across our local communities, we understand the importance of nutrition for our children and teenagers and the positive impact we can have in their learning journey.
In the fall of 2022, we created our snack boxes program with the intention of providing snack boxes to non profit organizations in the city of Lawrence providing educational programs to local youth. The organizations served go from Si Se Puede, Top Notch Scholars, Youth Development Organization, Hands to Help Tutoring Program, to our local community fridge.
Snack menus are created by our student workers based on the needs of the organizations served and the number of kids involved in the recipient programs. Snack boxes are put together by our student workers and/ or student volunteers.
Just a few weeks after the official opening of Hands to Help’s brand new community kitchen this fall, Merrimack College students have already prepared hundreds of meals for those in need in Lawrence, MA.
Kyla Stern ’24, Haleigh Teixeira ’24, Wil Hingston ’24 and Jillian Corrdiori ’24 have spent Wednesdays this semester at the kitchen as part of a community nutrition course taught by Eleanor Shonkoff, associate clinical professor.
“Out of the four of us we each get handed a different task,” said Hingston during a recent preparation of a pork dish. “Jill and Haley did the meat for the dinner, Kyla has been doing the vegetables and I’ve been doing the rice.”
Executive Director of Hands to Help
Director of Community Outreach and Operations
Research Creative and Achievement Conference returns to highlight research conducted by Merrimack College students.
