Living United

Mother Nature Reminds Us Who is Boss

Last week, a 5.8 earthquake was centered about 30 miles east of Charlottesville in rural Louisa County. As this is a rare event for Virginia and the East Coast, we are all on a learning curve. For instance, we have learned that regular homeowner’s insurance does not cover earthquake damage.

What we do know is that there was significant damage to buildings close to the epicenter,(photos here) including Louisa High School and Thomas Jefferson Elementary School. The high school will use the middle school building for alternate days with the middle school, with the high school using the building for extended hours on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and the middle school staff and students in there on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Yes, that is correct – Saturday.

The elementary school will combine with the other county elementary school and add 25 additional mobile units, with a staggered start to accommodate school buses.

For now, all schools in the county (which began school in mid-August) are closed until Sept. 6 and their school year has been extended to June 15.

We can only imagine how this will affect families and teachers in terms of child care for younger children and schedules for sports and other extra curricular activities, plus family events for those in middle and high school.

Then, to top off the misery, along comes hurricane Irene. Now those families with earthquake related holes in their homes had to contend with high winds and heavy rains and even more power outages. And, most homeowner’s insurance does not cover flood damage, either.

We urge those of you who want to help to consider donating to the Fluvanna/Louisa Housing Foundation Emergency Fund and/or the Red Cross of Central Virginia.

 

Posted by Kim Connolly

 

 

What Is a “School Ready” Community?

Parents everywhere are grappling with the start of school. Here is some food for thought from the Smart Beginnings State of Local School Readiness Report:

We know what children, families, schools and the community need to provide to ensure a child’s readiness for school. The Getting Ready research states that children “…need to be surrounded by strong structures in their lives: Caring families, Supportive communities, Ready schools and Effective service. Efforts to improve school readiness are most effective when they embrace the rich cultural and language backgrounds of families and children.” A young child’s readiness for school is influenced by a child’s development in five areas:

1. Physical health and motor development
2. Social and emotional development
3.  Approaches to learning
4.  Language development  
5. Cognition and general knowledge

 

For our children to be ready for school, our community needs to be ready to prepare them for success. A child’s readiness for school is the result of: Ready Children, Ready Families, Ready Services, Ready Schools, Ready Communities. Each component plays an essential role in school readiness and no one component can stand on its own. Smart Beginnings’ initiatives and goals address the five areas.

Importance of Starting Early

The first five years of life have an enormous impact on how well children learn and grow throughout their lifetime. Early experiences have tremendous influence on the development of the brain’s neuron connections. This “wiring” impacts the capacity to learn and develop social, emotional and cognitive skills. In the first three years of life, the majority of a child’s language development occurs.

During this critical time of development, we invest the least in children. The research shows that early learning experiences, the quality of young children’s environment and social experience have a decisive, long-lasting impact on children’s successful development and their ability to learn. However, during this period of rapid growth, communities invest the least in children’s education, care and services.

To learn more about what our community is doing to address this, visiting our Smart Beginnings section of our website.

We Don’t Just Wear the Shirt, We Live It.

To Live United means that you give, advocate and volunteer. It means that when you reach out a hand to one, you influence the condition of all. It means that we are all interconnected, interdependent, united. It means that you think of We before Me.

At the United Way-Thomas Jefferson Area, we try to Live United every day. Our staff is cause-driven – we like to help people, and love to be able to do it for a living.

So when it came time to design our ads for The Hook’s Annual Manual and C-Ville’s Best of C-Ville issues - which people tend to hold on to - we tried to incorporate that theme into our ad.

Here it is – what do you think?

 

Posted by Kim Connolly

When is a Deadline a Deadline?

Nonprofit project and volunteer team registration for the September 21^st United Way Laurence E. Richardson Day of Caring opened on June 1^st and a month before that for schools.

Since the first of June, we have had news stories and interviews on TV and radio and have run public services announcements on all three Charlottesville Newsplex stations and on nearly every radio station in Charlottesville encouraging nonprofits to register their projects and for volunteer teams to sign up. Several Constant Contact emails have been sent to everyone who has participated in the past.

Our intern called all the agencies who had not submitted projects a week before the deadline. CVille Calendar sent out a blast to their 7,000 subscribers. SuzySaidCville has posted about project registrations. Announcements have been made at meetings of local nonprofits and on the Chamber of Commerce weekly e-newsletter. And of course, we have done several blog posts about the Day of Caring, as well as had a prominent widget on our United Way home page and on the sidebar of this blog.

Volunteer Center director Jessica Snyder released the project list to all registered teams on Monday, and will be releasing the list of lottery numbers by which teams get to choose their projects next week.

And still…

Her phone is ringing and emails are pouring in from Proscrastinating Pollies (and Pauls) -  nonprofits who had not registered projects by the July 29 deadline and folks wanting to register their volunteer teams. One nonprofit even got phone calls from past volunteers who did not see the organization listed on the released project list asking why they did not have a project listed. What a missed opportunity for that nonprofit!

 The Proscrastinating Pollies say they had not heard anything about it… TV, print, radio, email, phone calls, Twitter, Facebook, website and postings on this blog since the beginning of June – are we missing something?

 

Posted by Kim Connolly