DOVER — The Greater Dover Chamber of Commerce held ribbon-cutting ceremonies recently to welcome three businesses as new Chamber members.
Kid’s Culture
Kid’s Culture is a childcare and learning center with sites in Dover, Somersworth, and Barrington. The mission of Kid’s Culture is to enrich the quality of family life by providing peace of mind to our families.
Erin Kniphfer founded Kid’s Culture in 2014 at the Somersworth location. Since then, they have expanded the business into three other locations around the Seacoast area. The most recent addition is at 43 Back River Road in Dover, which opened in April of 2023. All Kid’s Culture locations offer care for children ranging from 6 weeks old to 12 years old.
As the business continues to grow and expand, Kniphfer has maintained their goal of keeping Kid’s Culture community-focused at the forefront. “Our primary objective with all of our locations is to hear and support those in the communities that we serve,” says Kniphfer. “Being active and engaged members of the community helps us better understand our children’s needs, which, ultimately, leads to us being able to offer the best services that we can.”
At Kid’s Culture, there is a wide variety of programs offered to best suit the needs to children and parents across all age ranges. For children aged 6 weeks to 5 years old, there are 6 different childcare programs that are broken up by age range with a different monthly curriculum and care catered towards their needs. For school-aged children, Kid’s Culture offers summer camp (with before and after care add-ons available,) care options for school vacations weeks, and before/after care programs running during the school year. Kid’s Culture has also started quarterly Family Education Workshops to help their Families receive helpful information and training in a wide array of topics such as financing and community resources available to them.
“We want our centers to feel like a second home for our children,” says Kniphfer. “Our goal is to make them feel comfortable and safe, which will lead to the positive development of their social, mental, and physical skills.”
To learn more about Kid’s Culture, visit their website at kidsculturechildcare.com or email them a [email protected].
The Music Hall
The Music Hall is a nonprofit performing arts center comprised of two venues an 895-seat Victorian-era theater and a 116-seat nightclub-style, converted storefront venue, in the heart of downtown Portsmouth, NH. The Music Hall has been a landmark of the New Hampshire Seacoast for over 100 years.
When The Music Hall opened in 1878, it was a Vaudeville theater that helped to introduce a new type of cultural and artistic vibrancy to Portsmouth. Today, The Music Hall continues that tradition by bringing fresh performances and other enriching experiences to the New Hampshire Seacoast area.
“Our passion is to inspire, educate, and connect audiences through the power of live performances and on-screen programming,” says Executive Director Tina Sawtelle. “We aim to ignite creativity, purpose, and a sense of community.”
Throughout the year, The Music Hall showcases a wide array of programming across many different art forms and presentation formats. Most weeks, patrons can watch live musical performances or catch film screenings taking place at The Music Hall. Outside of these standard presentations, other common events include, live theatrical performances, conversations and panels with notable artists and personalities, and the two film festivals that are put on every year: Telluride by the Sea and the New Hampshire film festival. The main purpose of all Music Hall programming is to bring something new and fresh into the community for patrons to enjoy.
“Working at the Music Hall is so rewarding because there is always something new and exciting going on,” says Group Sales and Relationships Coordinator Lynn Smith. “Having a specific place where the goal is to bring fresh art and ideas into the community is so unique and valuable”
To learn more about The Music Hall, visit their website themusichall.org, email them at [email protected], or call them at 603-436-2400.
Reach for the Top Therapy Services
Reach for the Top Therapy Services is a 501(c)(3) non-profit therapy center that provides family-centered, trauma-informed, outpatient occupational, physical, and speech therapies for children with exceptional needs. Reach for the Top is located at Suite 331 inside Dover’s McConnell Center at 61 Locust Street.
Reach for the Top Therapy Services was founded in September of 2014, with the organization recently having celebrated its 9th anniversary last month. Reach was founded with a strong commitment to providing comprehensive therapy services focused on a family-centered model, in which the family is included in each session from the evaluation to every visit thereafter. This family-centered model helps instill consistency for the child and makes sure that families are best equipped to help their child outside of their therapy sessions.
“We aim to build relationships and resilience for the children,” says Executive Director and occupational therapist Amy Rich Crane, MSOT, OTR/L, BCP. “At Reach, we know we are only a small piece of the child and family’s journey, and that they will be better served when they are empowered to co-create the therapeutic strategies that work for them.”
Children with a wide array of needs come to Reach to work with their team of specialists. At Reach, their highly trained team collaborate with families to support children in physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, and feeding therapy, and in 11 other specialty programs located throughout the community, empowering children with diagnosis such as ADHD, autism, failure-to-thrive, Downs Syndrome, Developmental Delay, and more. The state-of-the-art clinic features large sensory integration rooms, a fine motor STEM room, a nature nook, quiet speech rooms, an infant/toddler room, a life skills room, a physical therapy gym, and an oral motor and feeding space that all work with Reach’s practice of science-based play. Reach works with over 600 children ranging from the ages of 1 week old to 20 years old and serves families in Stafford, Rockingham, Carroll, Belknap, and Hillsborough Counties and Southern Maine.
“Reach is committed to comprehensive, fun, creative, strengths-based intervention plans following best-practice standards of care,” says Rich Crane. “We are excited to keep growing and expanding to help children, families, and employees develop and nurture their skills, which strengthens our community.”
To learn more about Reach for the Top Therapy Services, visit their website reachftt.org or call them at 603-740-3534.
NEWBURYPORT, Mass – The Newburyport Bank Charitable Foundation has donated $5,000 to the Seacoast Arts and Cultural Alliance. The funds will support WSCA, in partnership with the Pinetree Institute, in producing a podcast series entitled “It Takes a Village – Addiction Prevention and Recovery” that will bring scores of subject matter experts to the table to discuss issues, services, barriers and solutions relating to addiction and co-occurring mental illness. The series will release a new episode twice per month for a total of 24 per year.
ROCHESTER — The Greater Rochester Chamber of Commerce, along with the Greater Dover Chamber of Commerce, and The Falls Chamber of Commerce provided a ribbon cutting ceremony last week to celebrate the opening of Keslar Insurance Agency’s new office in Rochester. Located at 16 North Main St., in downtown Rochester, Keslar Insurance Agency provides residential and commercial insurance solutions in N.H., Maine, and Mass. Cutting the ribbon in the photo are Lisa and David Keslar along with their agents, several chamber, city, and state representatives. Visit Keslar Insurance at their new office, call 603-273-0953, or visit www.keslarinsurance.com.
NEWBURYPORT, Mass – The Newburyport Bank Charitable Foundation has donated $1,000 to Greater Seacoast Community Health located in Portsmouth and Somersworth, New Hampshire. The donation is primarily to support services provided for those experiencing homelessness.
SANFORD, Maine — Partners Bank announced that it has been named one of the Best Places to Work in Maine for 2023. This esteemed recognition marks the second consecutive year that Partners Bank has received this prestigious honor, highlighting the organization’s commitment to fostering an exceptional workplace environment. For more information about Partners Bank and its services, please visit partners.bank.
NEWBURYPORT, Mass. – Newburyport Bank has donated $5,000 as a sponsor of An Evening With Exeter’sChefs. The event will take on Tuesday, Dec. 5, at Exeter Town Hall from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. and feature five local area chefs. Funds raised from the event will benefit the Exeter Area Scholarship Fund.
Chamber ribbon cuttings, business donations: Seacoast business … – Seacoastonline.com
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