Executive Director's Message

LIVE UNITED™ - We need you now, more than ever.

1/1/2009

We need you now, more than ever.

That is as clear as I can make it. About the only thing open to interpretation is the “you” in that statement. Is it singular, plural? Is it the familiar or the formal? Is it you the reader or just some “you” out there?

Unequivocally it is all of the above. Without belaboring this economy and the challenges it presents us, let us assume a landscape of financial fragility for all. Months ago when I first wrote of LIVE UNITED™, little could I imagine that we would be doing so under these circumstances. But we are and we will. How we do it will define us for a long time to come. In a very important, but questionable grammatical way, “we” are the “you.” Since we can come to this in different capacities, here are some of the ways we (and I mean you) can LIVE UNITED™ .

To the agencies that provide the programs we help to fund, we need you now, more than ever. While we (again, I mean you) are at work, we need to know that our parents can get a ride to their doctors’ appointments without us leaving work. We need to be reassured that our kids, very young or not, have quality learning and after school experiences. If we are struggling economically ourselves, we need you now, more than ever to help us find a way to fuel assistance or skill training. Without the programs that our agencies bring to the people in Meriden and Wallingford, they will be very different communities. Since we have never been communities with too much service, too much excess ability to help, we will lose the quality of life we have built and worked so hard to maintain. If you (that’s we) believe that it is difficult to maintain a program to do home visits for the elderly to make sure they are fed, safe and comfortable, imagine how much more difficult it will be to do without those visits and to have to re-establish such a program all over again. In this economy? It is far more efficient to preserve the things we need than to allow them to languish and try to revive them later. Prevention is always more efficient than rescue.

For the we who are donors to this United Way’s programs, we need you now, more than ever. Even in your own struggle and uncertainty, you have shown this community what you believe is important. Your investments in our programs have probably been one of the few investments you can look at and see growth. Eighty-five families were helped this past holiday season; that is an increase of over fifty percent from last year and almost double from two years ago. What investment have you made that you can say the same about? We need you now, more than ever because that investment cannot happen without you.

For the we who used to be donors to this United Way or who have never done so, we need you now, more than ever. The programs that you (we) preserve are not for anyone else but us. Your investment is local, stays local and can begin growing right now. You do not have to wait until next year to read about the program that helps new parents learn to read with their children and provides them the tools and books to do so. It is here right now. Telemonitoring for the health of people who want to stay at home and still need to be watched for some cardiac health issues is in this community. It will never be more of a benefit to lose it and it certainly won’t be cheaper for us if a family member is re-hospitalized when we could have prevented it. We need you now, more than ever.

If  LIVE UNITED™ teaches us anything, it is that we will get through this. But, we need you now, more than ever.

Call us at 203-235-4403 to help us LIVE UNITED™ .

12/1/2008
LIVE UNITED™ - Holiday Programs
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