January 2016 Newsletter – Connecticut Association for Community Action

Connecticut Association for Community Action

CAFCA Connections – January 12, 2016

 See newsletter for full article on each of these stories

On January 21st and 22nd in Nashua, NH, NY Times Op-Ed columnist Charles M. Blow; Robert Woodson, Founder and President, Center for Neighborhood Enterprise; Democratic Presidential Candidate Martin O'Malley; Greg Kaufmann, Talk Poverty/Center for American Progress; David Cay Johnston, Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter and author of 'Divided: The Perils of our Growing Inequality;' and other prominent speakers will come together in one place to discuss poverty, inequality, and the 2016 presidential election – 2016 Politics, Poverty and the Presidency Forum.

• Community Action's Impact this Holiday Season
  • The Access Agency's Emergency Shelter held a staff party for all shelter residents
  • Action for Bridgeport Development's Early Learning Division held a Big Bike Giveaway sponsored by Bikeport Co-op. The event raffled off 65 bikes to children in the ELD program.
  • Children in the Community Renewal Team's (CRT) Head Start program received gifts through the Farmington Avenue West Hartford Stop and Shop's Giving Tree
  • Santa’s Workshop opened at New Opportunities, Inc. through a partnership with the Connecticut State Police Barracks, Toys for Tots, Mattatuck Museum, the Republican–American, the Palace Theater, the Waterbury Regional Chamber of Commerce, and numerous other businesses...Over 370 families with 1,620 smiling faces received 5,000 gifts through this effort.
  • TEAM's annual Toys 4 Kids Drive collects new, unwrapped toys during November and December and distributes them as holiday gifts to over 1,700 children
• CAAWC celebrates 50 years of Community Action
• BCO opens Warming Center for Homeless

• Connecticut households needing energy assistance grew in 2015 (Meriden Record Journal, 1/3/16)
• Malloy targets social services, hospitals in cuts to balance state budget (Daniela Altimari, Courant, 12/30/15)
• Connecticut's minimum wage to increase in a few days (Christine Stuart, CT News Junkie, 12/29/15)
• Murphy vows to fight for heating assistance during Bridgeport visit (Merideth Guinness, Daily Voice, 12/29/15)
• Heating assistance requests holding steady (Adam Benson, Norwich Bulletin, 12/27/15)
• More CT households need energy aid despite falling fuel prices (Keith M. Phaneuf, 12/16/15)
• The price of hunger in America (Vivek H. Murphy, Huffington Post, 12/10/15)

NASCSP
2016 Mid-Winter Training Conference
February 22-26, 2016 in Alexandria, VA

NCAF
2016 Legislative Conference
March 15-18 in Washington, DC

New England Community Action Partnership
Politics, Poverty and the Presidency: 2016 Presidential Forum
January 21-22, 2016 in Nashua, NH

www.cafca.org