Open the door into Kingston Children's Center, and it's like taking a step back in time. The building is rife with history, built in 1880 and undergoing a series of identity changes since then, from school to church and back to a school again. Large rooms, wood everywhere, a permeating homey atmosphere. Who would think that a cutting-edge silicon heart beats beneath the bucolic exterior?
The center, based in Kingston may be enjoying a fully networked infrastructure these days, but it wasn't always like this. The day-to-day demands of running a child-care facility without huge amounts of cash flow often forced Executive Director Stacey Barnett to simply make do without the conveniences of technology; when the computers would drag and the network would go offline, well, there wasn't money in the budget to bring in a brigade of IT wonks...
...On Sept. 11, 2012, it all changed. Staff members from Hampton-based Unitil came to Kingston Children's Center for the annual Day of Caring, an event coordinated by United Way of the Greater Seacoast that gives businesses the opportunity to dispatch their employees to various nonprofit agencies for a day of projects.
On that day, Unitil's representatives fanned out around the exterior of the building, raking, mowing, weeding, clearing out sandboxes and fluffing wood chips. A soft-spoken member of Unitil's IT department named Mike offered to take a peek at the center's computer setup.
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