The Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) created a toolkit to encourage municipal governments, state legislators, nonprofits, educational institutions, and individuals to use  to communicate with residents about available tools and resources to help grapple with these winter energy cost increases. The toolkit may also be useful to communities working to become more age- and dementia friendly.

This toolkit includes information from utilities, state agencies, and others, as well as template social media content you can tailor for your own community and use. In addition to providing easy-to-use communications resources, this guide aims to provide background on why these energy price increases are happening and how they are impacting residents across Massachusetts.  

The guide provides easy-to-use communications resources to inform consumers, residents, and small businesses about the increase in energy costs and near-term solutions. This guide includes: 

• Resources for residents in your community 
• Social media language and images 
• Utility assistance fliers in 8 languages (English, Arabic, Cape Verdean Creole, Haitian Creole, Khmer, Portuguese, Spanish, and Vietnamese)
• Links to additional resources 

More information on the toolkit and many helpful resources on the issue are available here.