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.