There is much to be grateful for in 2011.  It is the time of year to reflect, celebrate with friends and family and to be hopeful for the future.  We have done our reflection and we are grateful to live and work in Greater New Haven.

My day started at Truman School in the Hill section of New Haven.  The school is immaculate and architecturally stunning as the remodel that occurred five years ago incorporated the beauty of the original structure as it was totally modernized.   The reason for my visit was to accompany ten of the volunteers and leaders from Yale-New Haven Hospital (YNHH) as they delivered a truck load of school supplies.  Every year for the last ten years the employees of the hospital organize a drive as part of the United Way Annual Campaign to collect these supplies from their fellow.

The Community Leadership Program (CLP) is entering its tenth year this Fall. The program continues to improve every year and has made a real difference in the Greater New Haven community. I was fortunate to join nineteen others for the first cohort and to this day I have a strong relationship with the people I shared it with. The program was a combination of a number of important inquiries for me. We looked at the importance of spirituality in preparing oneself for leadership.

New Haven lost a giant last week and he left an indelible mark on this city.  Herb Pearce was a self-made man who started his career in New Haven at the A. C. Gilbert Company.  At the tender young age of 55, he left A. C. Gilbert and started the H. Pearce Real Estate Co.  He was a can do kind of guy and well known throughout New Haven.  Herb was the most positive person I have ever known.  His energy was infectious and it was a joy to be around him. 

We in Connecticut are faced with some very significant fiscal challenges.  Depending on who you talk to State Government is facing the reality of $3-4 billion deficit in the upcoming budget.  This will be very difficult.

People from all political sides share common aspirations. We can likely all agree that everyone deserves opportunities to have a good life: a quality education that leads to a stable job, enough income to support a family through retirement, and good health.  Government has a significant role in our achieving our aspirations and while reasonable people can disagree about the size and scope of the role none can deny how intertwined the public, private and nonprofit sectors find themselves in 2011.  How we deal with this fiscal crisis will have long term ramifications for all of us in Connecticut.

When you face outward as an organization you focus on people’s aspirations, you rethink the work that you do, you craft different relationships with other organizations and you question many aspects of your structure and function. This was the message we heard this past week from Rich Harwood, CEO of the Harwood Institute. I met Rich this past spring as part of the Education Mobilization Cohort led by United Way Worldwide.

As the days of August draw to a close, the energy that accompanies the beginning of a new school year feels palpable.  Here at United Way, we’ve spent all summer “in school,” working hard on the Boost! partnership, one of the components of the School Change Initiative in New Haven. 

United Way of Greater New Haven has focused for the last three years on education, income and health because we know that these areas are most important to individuals and families achieving success in life. While the three are inter-related, education is at the heart of our societal challenges. The nature of our economy today requires increasingly sophisticated skills for people to command a sustainable income. The future economic development of our region will depend on the available talent living here. 

We are very excited and proud to be partnering with the City of New Haven and the New Haven Public Schools to launch Boost! (boostnewhaven.org).

Several years ago UWGNH was facing a very difficult annual campaign and we decided that we needed to bring the volunteers and staff together to build a high performance team. We decided to take the group for a day long adventure at the “ropes course” at the Hopkins School. The course is set up as a series of challenges that require strategy and teamwork. The group was doing very well balancing a seesaw, trusting each other while blindfolded and the other challenges and we all thought “this is no problem”-- until we came to the wall. The wall was twelve feet high and was flat as a board. The challenge was to get the entire team to the top of the wall. We were a mixed group of older, younger, male and female and one team member who was over 300 pounds.

 New Media is quickly becoming the strategy center of all of the opportunities we provide people to give, volunteer and advocate for the common good. Eighteen months ago I asked JR Logan (our then Director of Leadership Giving) to leave that position and to immerse himself in the new world of Blogs, Facebook, Linked In, Twitter and all other things “New Media”; to learn what was going on and how we needed to use these new tools to bring the Live United Brand alive. As with most things in life, timing is everything, and the timing could not have been more perfect.