The Troy based Organized Community Action Program celebrated 50 years of helping people and changing lives Thursday night at the Troy University Trojan Center.

Wanda Moultry, OCAP director, said the celebration event was held in an effort to show appreciation to all supporters of the program and to encourage the continuation of the OCAP mission.

“We at Organized Community Action could not do what we do without the support of our sponsors, the local government and the media,” Moultry said. “With their continued support over the next 50 years, we might not be able to completely eradicate poverty but we can certainly attack the issues that produce poverty.”

Moultry said she is honored to be a part of a program that is dedicated to helping people. “Cindy Hinton, service director, has been with OCAP 46 years and we congratulate her,” Moultry said. “She is greatly appreciated.”

OCAP provides a variety of services to qualified people in a 12-county area. Among those services are housing, counseling, weatherization and Head Start programs.

“We also have an energy program that assists with utilities,” Moultry said. “Our fatherhood program reunites fathers with their children. These fathers might have been out of their children’s lives because they were in jail or prison or just because they chose to be absent. The goal is to involve these fathers with their children. OCAP serves Pike, Bullock, Butler, Covington, Crenshaw, Dale and Lowndes counties. In addition to those counties, OCAP has Head Start programs in Conecuh and Monroe counties and weatherization programs in Geneva, Henry and Barbour counties.

“OCAP has 198 partnerships in the different counties that help us, through referrals, do what we couldn’t do otherwise,” Moultry said. “By all of us working together, we are able to help people and change lives.”

OCAP employs 165 in the service county area and works with an annual budget of between $8 and $10 million.