It’s Time To LIVE UNITED™

United Way stands at the threshold of an unparalled opportunity to make our country and our community better. This spring, Brian Gallagher, President and CEO, United Way of America, said, “It is increasingly apparent that the basic building blocks of a good life – quality education, stable income, and good health – are beyond the reach of too many individuals and families. As a nation, we cannot accept these conditions. We need to challenge our systems to ignite a new social movement and begin to develop new partnerships and strategies which will create opportunities for a better life for all people.” A bold statement, but true. True here in Norwalk, Wilton, and Darien as well as throughout the United States.

The road map to follow, he suggests, is to LIVE UNITED™. “Underneath everything we are, underneath everything we do, we are all people, connected, interdependent, united. And when we reach out a hand to one, we influence the condition of all. That’s what it means to LIVE UNITED™.”

We agree. It is a challenge that United Way of Norwalk & Wilton, at the close of its 49th year, embraces wholeheartedly and will promote vigorously in the years ahead.

For our United Way it means that we will continue and improve the cutting-edge work that you will read about in the following pages with a renewed focus on outcomes and results, all under the banner of Advancing the Common Good – creating opportunities for a good life for all in our community. And we will do that together in partnership with all segments of the community.

To do this work will require retaining the best of our history while adding new resources, new partnerships, and new organizational structures. That’s one of the reasons that our Board in March signed a Letter of Understanding to join the new United Way of Coastal Fairfield County by the close of the 2008-09 fiscal year, making it an 11-community United Way with $11.4 million in revenue, stretching along the Fairfield County coast and including the towns just to the north. As Westport-Weston United Way said in a letter to its stakeholders: “We recognize that in order to create real and lasting impact, United Way can no longer define community by geographic boundaries. Instead, we need to work together to address the regional issues that affect us all.” Again, we agree and look forward to joining them for the same reason next year.

Many details about the new United Way are yet to be worked out, but key to success for us will be making sure it is an organization that never loses sight of serving well the Norwalk, Wilton, and Darien communities. The words may change a bit in marketing materials and brochures from the past, but the new United Way will combine the best of the former independent United Ways to serve their communities better than ever was imagined and will call on all in the Coastal Fairfield County area to LIVE UNITED™.

Even as we look ahead, we want to be sure to thank our donors for their contributions this past year, our volunteers for their dedication, our partners for their support, and our small staff for its professionalism and willingness always to do more. It has been quite a year and without our working together very little of it could have been accomplished.

In closing, the immortal words of Dag Hammarskjöld, the second Secretary-General of the United Nations who embodied the spirit of LIVE UNITED™, capture for us where we are at this juncture in our United Way’s journey: “For all that has been, thanks. For all that will be, yes.”

Philip P. Verdi Board Chair	Thomas J. Williams Immediate Past Board Chair	David R. Kennedy President and CEO