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Executive Director's Message
LIVE UNITED™ - Local Models
7/1/2008
Are you ready for your next lesson in how to LIVE UNITED™ ? Every Tuesday for this month (and every Tuesday for the next one, too) we have had ads featuring local residents telling how they LIVE UNITED™ . If you have seen them, great. If you have not… go back and look for them or keep reading.
Living United means being part of the change. Thinking of we before me. United Way of Meriden and Wallingford accomplishes this with your help by creating long-lasting community change. This means that we foster and fund those programs that address the underlying causes of the most significant local issues. We call this working towards advancing the common good by creating opportunities for a better life for all. We can do this by focusing on education, income and health. These are the building blocks that we all need for a good life.
Here’s how it can work. When young people get a quality education that leads to a stable job, they are more likely to be adults with enough income to support a family through retirement and to have good health. Supporting those programs that make sure that all of our kids are ready for school is the place to start. Visit one of the early education programs in Wallingford or Meriden and you will discover that getting ready for school today is more than learning to play nicely. We expect an awful lot from our pre-schoolers and since many of us rely on a retirement system that requires them, as adults, to be working and paying into the system, let’s not shortchange that process.
These children, as adults, will do much more than pay into our retirement system (and choose how we older people will be cared for). Adults in this new century face an economy that challenges them as workers to be flexible and ever-learning. If they are, though, they will be sure to be able to raise their own families with the kinds of supports and opportunities that you and I work so hard to do for our own now. A stable family income is more than knowing that there is money to pay the bills. It’s about having the funds to ensure that no one is going without basics, worrying about their health or, fearing their retirement.
Education. Income. Health. It sounds so basic, so simple that we might forget how challenging it can be to achieve all three. But be assured that if we fail on one of them, the others will follow to failure. As this current economy is teaching us, there are no longer just the “haves” and the “have nots” in our community. There are also the “used to haves” who are becoming increasingly challenged by education, income and health issues. It will take everyone in the community working together–government, business, faith groups, nonprofits, the labor movement, ordinary citizens. Remember, we all win when a child succeeds in school, when a family becomes financially stable, when people have good health.
Our “How I LIVE UNITED™ ads” tell you the ways others have chosen to advance the common good. Now, it’s up to you to figure out how you can fit into this process. When you do, let us know and help us to let others know as well. That way we all can start to be the change that we want to see. That’s what it means to LIVE UNITED™ .
Tell us how you LIVE UNITED™ . Call us at 203-235-4403.
8/1/2008
LIVE UNITED™ - Give. Advocate. Volunteer
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