A Fun Side to United Way

 With all the recent heat, I thought today would be a good day to take a break from the more serious side of United Way to talk about some of the "lighter" news. As you can see from the graphic above, United Ways all over New England are participating in Six Flags New England's two United Way Fun Days, and the first is coming up this Saturday, July 31. Six flags is allowing United Way supporters to buy specially discounted tickets for the day through an on-line ordering process. The deal includes all day admission to Six Flags New England and Hurricane Harbor Water Park, free parking and an "All You Can Eat" buffet. The total value of the package is $77.00, but the special United Way price for the day is $40.00. We have a link on our website, or you can simply click here to go directly to the site. A portion of the ticket price will go back to United Way. The deadline for tickets for this Saturday is today, so you'll need to rush!

If you like baseball, our good friends at BIC and the Bridgeport Bluefish have a deal for you as well.As part of their annual campaign for United Way, BIC are having a special night at Harbor Yard on Tuesday, August 3. The Bluefish will be playing the York Revolution, and you get get a ticket for $10 which includes a special Kids Eat Free event for kids age 12 and under. Simply click here, and enter "Bic" as the password to purchase your tickets. A portion of the ticket price will go back to United Way.

So go out and have some fun, and at the same time, you will be benefiting United Way.

For more information about Valley United Way, visit our website at www.valleyunitedway.org.

Leadership Greater Valley Accepting Applications

One of the great things that we are involved with at Valley United Way is community leadership. Earlier this year we had several stories about our own Youth Leadership program, but it's that time of year when we switch gears and talk about Leadership Greater Valley - a unique leadership program conducted jointly by Valley United Way, the Valley Council for Health & Human Services and the Greater Valley Chamber of Commerce. Now in its 15th year, this program is uniquely by and for the Valley, and produces outstanding new leaders for the Valley every year.

Class of 2009

The program has really evolved. Originally, it was a program of United Way and the Valley Council. It's focus was a bit more narrow in promoting diversity in volunteer leadership positions throghout the Valley and much of the training focused on board skills. United Way wrote and administered grants that supported the the program. There was a consensus that the long term success of the program would need to include greater involvement by the business community. And then Bill Purcell arrived at the Chamber in our "All America" year of 2000. One of Bill's goals was to develop a leadership program at the Chamber. The connections were obvious, and the program was renamed Leadership Greater Valley with the three partners working together to carry on the program. The Chamber now provides the administrative support to coordinate the efforts of our volunteer committee.

What makes this program so unique is the blending of personal skills and knowledge of the community that is interwoven throughout the eight week program. This year's program includes eight sessions with the topics ranging from qualitites of leadership to the history of the Valley. Along the way, the participants have the opportunity to meet and mingle with leaders from every walk of life in the Valley. At the end of the program, they bring their new skills and contacts back to their business life - and also their community life as our Volunteer Center Director Pat Tarasovic works with them to find a placement in a volunteer leadership postition in the Valley. Two former participants are currently my "bosses" as members of Valley United Way's Board of Directors - Adrienne Cabral and Eileen Lopez-Cordone.

Leadership Greater Valley now has its own "alumni" association linking all past members of the program. They now have their own Facbook site which you can find by clicking here.

I personally try to get to as many of the sessions as possible. Not only to take pictures of the sessions, but also because I find that I learn something new at just about every session. I would highly recommend this program to anyone looking to develop their personal leadership skills and to learn more about the great community where we live and work.

Nancie Gray has put together this year's application, and you can get it by clicking here.

For more information about Valley United Way, visit our website at www.valleyunitedway.org.

Nick is in the home stretch

Take a minute to think just how far Nick Tarasovic has gone while training for the Revolutiion3 Cedar Point iron man event to be held in Septmeber. When Nick sends me his weekly reports to update our website, I seldom stop to contemplate what they are adding up to. Through Sunday, Nick has accumulated 3,722 miles of motion on land and in the water. That means he's already done the equivalent of a trip across country to Los Angeles - and he's now well on his way back. I get tired just thinking of the hours that have gone into it so far - and how much more is still to come before it's over!

With the Tour deFrance currently reaching a conclusion, I think many people are getting a greater appreciation for the difficulty involved, but I also think it gives one a better understanding of just how difficult Nick's quest is. He is training to do 112 miles on a bike in one day, but he is also going to run a marathon and swim 2.4 miles the same day!!

I do a bit of running myself (OK, maybe running would be overstating my speed!), and I can appreciate the tenacity that Nick has in getting out there almost every single day. There are lots of days where I just don't feel like running - so I don't. When Nick feels that way, he just puts the thoughts out of his mind and gets going. I think he has many motivations, but the funds that he is raising for United Way, the Y, the Umbrella and TEAM, Inc. certainly looms large as attested to by the more than $6,500 that has been pledged already.

I need to get in a plug for another aspect of Nick's training as part of his training regimen will include swimming in the The First Ever Housy One-Miler Swim to raise money for GRIFFIN HOSPITAL DEVELOPMENT FUND INC. on August 22. If you want to motivate Nick for that and contribute to the new Brest Wellness Center, click here.

Keep up the good work Nick!!

For more information about Valley United Way, visit our website at www.valleyunitedway.org.

Electronic Valley put Valley on the World Wide Web

Back in the early '90's the Valley was suffering a bit of an identity crisis due to the sudden demise of the local daily newspaper, The Evening Sentinel, and the only local radio station, WADS. Love them or hate them, everyone read the Sentinel and listened to WADS to keep up with the latest news in their hometown.The lack of a local daily and radio station was identified as a real community issue by the Healthy Valley 2000 project which was gearing up at that time. Healthy Valley was concerned with the quality of life of the community and saw the lack of truly local mass media as a detriment to the community.

There was quite a buzz about the same time being created by this new media - the World Wide Web - but not many had access to it. Here at Valley United Way we were very intrigued by the possibilities to better serve our constituents and had been experimenting with the forerunners of the Internet  in the form of Compuserve and an emerging AOL among other services, but they were slow and cumbersome to use as well as being expensive.

Then one day, I happened to notice that a local business man, John Joy of Oxford, was working with the Internet and offering community groups the opportunity to post information on his website for Oxford about services that might be available to residents. A quick call and suddenly United Way was up on his site and providing 25 word descriptions of the agencies that we funded.

As Healthy Valley was working on the media issue in the Valley, it became apparent that there was a real opportunity here to move the Valley forward through the use of new technologies. We couldn't afford to start a newspaper or a radio station, but we could afford to venture into the new electronic media. A committee was formed and quickly determined that we would opt for the full blown Internet rather than the competing BBS services that some communities were starting. That decision proved to be the correct one, and we recruited the artists at the Greenwich Workshop in Shelton to help with the design of that first page and the icons linking us to the information that we thought people would want to know about the Valley.

We created websites for all of the Valley towns and many of its nonprofits.We also created pages highlighting categories of interest that we thought cut across all of the towns. Interestingly, the site was not called the Electronic Valley. Originally, the site address was www.LNVvalley.org. If you enter that URL, it still works. The LNV stood for Lower Naugatuck Valley, but we soon found that people confused the L with an i and many had trouble finding the site. So we made it easier - but longer - with www.electronicvalley.org. (The invalley.org still works as well!)

This was entirely a volunteer project made possible by our technical guru John Joy whose computer expertise made the difficult seem easy. He did all of the back end work and hosted the site - he still does for the Electronic Valley data. Others helped with the content and creation of pages. Grants from local foundations allowed us to purchase computers which were given to local organizations such as libraries, nursing homes and other public groups that agreed to take the computers and allow the public in to use them. We provided software and classes for those who wanted to learn how to create content and put it on the Electronic Valley.

In very short order, the Valley had a very robust and informative web portal. Originally, all the pages had addressess such as Valley United Way's - www.lnvalley.org/vuw. Each city was www.lnavalley.org/cityname. Over time, we envisioned that groups would eventually get their own sites and we would simply link to them. United Way is now valleyunitedway.org, but we never forget that it was the Electronic Valley that allowed us the opportunity to get our feet wet and learn how to use this new media. At one point, United Way of America named our website the best in the country for United way's our size or smaller. Connecticut Magazine named the Electronic Valley one of the 50 best websites in Connecticut!

The Electronic Valley continues to thrive, and I was prompted to write this because they will be holding their annual meeting in the Lavietes Room at Valley United Way on August16 at 6:00 PM. They will conduct the normal business that you would expect in electing their board and officers, but they are also looking for a new generation of volunteers interested in helping to further develop the Valley's oldest and most comprehensive website. If you are interested, stop by. In the meantime, they have listed some volunteer opportunities on United Way's own unique web tool for volunteers - Volunteer Opportunities. Click here to take a look.

For more information about Valley United Way, visit our website at www.valleyunitedway.org.

Allocations Committee Did Great Work!

I always tell people that it is very difficult to give money away, and they usually laugh. The reality is that it is difficult to give money away so that it can make a real difference in the community. Here at Valley United Way, we rely on the wisdom of the community in giving away money. Specifically, our Allocations Committee under the able leadership of Chairman Peter Galla is composed of volunteers drawn from all walks of life in the community. The one thing that they have in common is their love for the community and desire to see it always improve.

This year, we had twenty-eight volunteers who responded to our call for help. Some like Rich Bshara and Brian Sexton have been doing this for over twenty years while Anna Davidi, Tracy Hussey, Bill Maloney, and Joe Sedlock were the "rookies" in this year's process. The process actually began in April when area agencies began the preparation of their requests for funding. this is now an on-line system eliminating an enormous amount of paperwork. Agencies are required to submit quite a bit of financial and programmatic data justifying their requests for funding.

 In early May, the volunteers came in for a brief orientation and to receive their assignments. They worked in teams to review the information submitted by the agencies. Over the course of the next month they also had the opportunity to visit with the agencies to get a first hand look at the programs that the agencies run. This really helps to put a face on all the numbers that the agencies have submitted previously. After meeting with the agencies and reviewing the submitted applications, the volunteer submitted their own evaluations and their recommendations for funding.

At that point, the volunteers came back to meet in three panels to review and refine their recommendations. At that point, they did not know exactly how much money would be available for allocations and were making their recommendations strictly based on their evaluations. They then worked on their panels to bring their numbers in line with the number that United Way's finance committee would make available to them. A week later, the panel heads go together one last time to bring the panel recommendations in synch with the final number from the Finance Committee. They did an outstanding job, and a week later the numbers were presented to United Way's Board of Directors for action.

The Board of Directors has a great deal of respect for both the Allocations and Finance Committees and it is ultimately up to them to approve, reject or modify the recommendations. This year they adopted the recommendations as presented to them.

I want to thank everyone who served this year. It is not easy making the tough funding decisions made much tougher by the current economic uncertainty, but they did an outstanding job. They were fair and open minded and did their best to insure that the dollars invested in the agencies returns the greatest possible benefit to the community - and to the donors who make this all possible.

I want to personally thank everyone who helped this year. You can find the complete listing of all the volunteers and the allocations that they made this year at http://www.valleyunitedway.org/2010/allocations.htm.

For more information about Valley United Way, visit our website at www.valleyunitedway.org.