Opportunities For Otsego Inc. is certainly a busy organization these days. OFO is marking its 40th anniversary this year in helping build a stronger and safer community for many.

For example in 2005 alone, 2,000 people received emergency food assistance from OFO. About 225 households received intervention from violence. More than 300 children participated in preschool activities to develop school- readiness skills. This is merely scratching the surface of what OFO accomplishes every year in Otsego County.

Opportunities For Otsego came about from the Economic Opportunity Act (EOA) of 1964, signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson, and became a central part of his Great Society campaign and its War on Poverty.

The EOA initially established well over a thousand community action agencies (CAAs) at the local level across the nation. By 1968, Otsego County was among more than 1,600 agencies covering two-thirds of the nation’s counties.

The first local organizational meeting took place Jan. 19, 1966, at Oneonta High School. A state field consultant for the Office for Economic Opportunity, John Haith, told the group of interested people attending the meeting, "Community Action programs will vary as the needs of the people vary in different parts of the nation. They must be part of a total effort to help people escape poverty, not to make it more bearable. The problems of the poor must be assessed in more than money terms."

OFO’s first office was found in the basement of the Otsego County Courthouse building in Cooperstown until 1980. Alva Welch served as the first executive director. The office relocated to 32 Main St. in Oneonta and now is found at 3 West Broadway, a site it has occupied since 1992.

Much has changed with the initiatives of the EOA since 1964, through modifications, weakening, or total eliminations. Head Start and Job Corps are the only remaining programs, and depending on the location, they are managed by local agencies or the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services.

Dan Maskin, executive director of OFO, said that no two community-action agencies in our region are exactly alike. OFO manages Head Start, which began in Otsego County in July 1966 at Oneonta’s Center Street School.

Somewhat unique for Otsego County, explained Gary Herzig, deputy director of OFO, is a large domestic-violence program. The Community Connections Food Bank serves 27 pantries and feeding sites across Otsego County. Saturday’s Bread and the Lord’s Table are fairly recent additions as feeding sites. The January 2004 opening of the Opportunity House on Depew Street in Oneonta helps shelter homeless families.

OFO provides services to 6,000 people across Otsego County, in approximately 3,000 households.[an error occurred while processing this directive]