Rumford Public Library

The Rumford Public Library often serves as a retreat and home for many children and adolescents. It has served as a haven where they can learn to read, develop skills and become enriched. It has served as a neutral and supervised place for estranged children to meet with their dysfunctional parent(s). Often the staff has had to protect them from verbal and, sometimes, threatened physical abuse. Frequently, there is nowhere else to go after school, and home can be a place where anger and despair are constant. Friends of the River Valley has provided funds to the Friends of the Rumford Public Library to support literacy, STEM, and basic computer programs to supplement the Public-School curriculum.

Every summer, the library serves as a meals site and is a year-round healthy snack location for children. The library provides day refuge for the elderly and homeless and offers an entrée to the world of reading for children and their families.

In 2021 FRV contributed $17,500 to fund learning and enrichment offerings and STEAM programs geared towards stimulating interest in the sciences. Dozens of these programs involved hundreds of children together with parents