NORWICH – At a campaign kickoff celebration that brought Chenango United Way's board members together, Executive Director Elizabeth Monaco delivered her annual message; detailing a list of achievements that the nonprofit has brought to the community over the last year.
During the gathering, the United Way campaign committee laid out its annual campaign goal of $419,000 to be raised from giving community donors and businesses by the end of 2016.
Additionally, Monaco presented board member John Antonowicz with the organization's “Volunteer of the Year” for his contributions to the community through the Chenango United Way. In particular, Anotoniwicz was responsible for organizing and securing community sponsorship for the Chenango-opoly board game as a fund raising initiative for the United Way.
Proceeds from the United Way's annual campaign are used to fund more than 20 local area programs and initiatives that directly benefit basic education, health and income related shortcoming for less-than-fortunate community members across Chenango County.
A number of United Way sub committee-type community impact teams worked together last year to address and initiate various community centric initiatives. In this capacity, the United Way became an active member of the Building a Healthy Community Coalition, serving as well fiscal conduit for the project. Likewise, the other community impact teams organized and funded the Dolly Parton Imagination Library that served more than 1200 Chenango County children who were enrolled in the program. 172 of those “graduated,” exceeding reading and literacy objectives based on early education standards.
Monaco said that by far the greatest achievement the organization led was the Greater Chenango Cares IRT no-cost medical clinic that served more than 1,800 patients to the tune of nearly $1 Million.
“The event reaffirmed our belief that volunteerism is alive and well in our region,” said Monaco. “To have more than 400 volunteers give of their time and talents over ten days of this event is mind-blowing. Many worked all ten days, some for 10-12 hours at a time. I am so proud of our community and what it did to support our service personnel on this effort.”
While more than 400 volunteers did their part in making the event a success, Monaco noted that a number of area agencies including local government also play a large part in the two-week clinic.
“I am so proud of the number of organizations that came together to collaborate on this effort without turf issues or personal agendas,” said Monaco. “This project was a ton of work and took a lot of time and everyone did it with the big picture in mind. We learned how critical dental and optical services are to our local community. Also, the medical and optometry clinics reported that it diagnosed several people with chronic conditions that had previously been undiagnosed- such as diabetes, glaucoma and high blood pressure.”
Monaco continued, “These patients were able to get treatment recommendations, education and referrals for further treatment that they otherwise would not have had, all because of their visit to the IRT. We will be using this information to begin some local discussions with the hope that a collaborative approach can be used to address this issue.”