Day of Caring

Thursday May 8 was the 16th annual United Way Day of Caring, and I wanted to tell you a little about some of the great things that happened that day in our community. More than 10,000 volunteers worked on about 500 project sites in and around Rochester worked, doing things like basic indoor spring cleaning, raking, weeding and planting, painting rooms, building decks and picnic tables, washing windows and more. All the volunteers were also invited to a free luncheon sponsored by the Clarion Riverside Hotel, as a way to say thank you for volunteering.
Also, this year we teamed up with the City of Rochester and M&T Bank to focus on literacy projects. The schools that benefited from these projects were Roberto Clemente Elementary School #8, James Duffy School #12, Henry W. Longfellow School #36, Mary McLeon Bethune School #45 and World of Inquiry School #58. Volunteers read books to students and helped make Mother’s Day gifts.

We’re also excited that, thanks to M&T Bank, $10,000 was given to United Way to help support literacy summer programs in five City schools, and to launch a new program geared to ensure classrooms have supplies of books for students.

Click here to check out some of the pictures we captured throughout the day. In all, more than $1 million worth of work was completed in one day. If you have some pics to share of your team in action, send them to us - we’d love to add them to our gallery! And thanks again to everyone who took the time off of work and school to be part of the 2008 United Way Day of Caring.

Great Fundraisers

I wanted to tell you about some of the great United Way fundraisers happening at area companies that people have written to us about. First, Jared Sabado over at the Democrat and Chronicle sent us some impressive pictures from their bake off which raised $330 toward their goal! At Hillside Children’s Center, Erin Donnelly and Todd Pipitone invited me out to their annual pancake breakfast, where I was able to witness the staff pancake eating contest -- which was quite a spectacle! They had about 50 people turn out and raised $150 toward their goal.

Our supporters throw great fundraisers for United Way, but I want you to know about some of the cool events we employees at United Way had as part of our own internal campaign. One of the most successful was a friendly competition we called Jar Wars. Our building was divided into three teams and we all put money into our jars. But the catch was dollars and quarters were negative money – they subtracted from the totals! There was some pretty intense competition at the end, each team was determined to win! In the end, we raised more than $700. Check out some of the pictures from all the great fundraisers – and thanks to everyone for supporting our community through United Way!