A community group in Bridgton is ready for the cold weather to hit, with places for residents to warm up and heaters and blankets to send home.

“I just had this idea that people are going to be cold,” said Bridgton’s public health officer, Faye Daley, who founded Project Warm at the end of the summer. “It just blossomed from there.”

Over the fall, Project Warm has received donations including polar fleece, electric heaters and the use of space to provide a warming shelter for area residents.

The Bridgton Community Center is the primary warming center and is available Monday-Saturday 9 a.m.-4 p.m. If the community center fills up, the Bridgton Library and a room in the Municipal Complex will be open as well. If need surpasses these spaces, churches and the Bridgton Hospital have offered space as well. Games, toys, hot drinks and television are available to keep people occupied at the community center

Though warming centers opened Dec. 1, nobody had show up by Dec. 16, according to Lorraine Goldrup at the Bridgton Community Center. Daley said this was probably due to warm temperatures.

In addition to providing a warm place for residents to go, Project Warm volunteers are working to make people warmer within their own homes as well.

Honeywell donated 150 electric space heaters, Daley said. They will be distributed to residents in need by town office staff in Sweden, Denmark, Casco, Naples, Harrison and Bridgton. Ten bolts of polar fleece were donated as well, which the Chickadee Quilters cut into blankets to distribute to people in need.

“We have not spent one dime to date,” Daley said. “It’s just neighbors helping neighbors.”