EnglishHaitian CreoleSpanish
, ,

The holiday season continues to flourish at 7 Academy Street with the annual Holiday Grab-And-Go.

, ,

Pictured: Director of Elementary Based Programs, Tricia Massucco (left) and Manager of High School & Middle School Programs, Mary Martini (right).

Since 10 a.m. this morning, our holiday dynamos, Mary & Tricia, have been handing out personalized gift bags to Carver families. This marks the third annual Holiday Grab-And-Go, a gift-giving initiative developed during the pandemic to bring cheer to the Carver community when the Holiday Party was on hold. What began as a socially distanced solution has become an event in its own right; 75 families will be streaming in and out of the Carver Center today to pick up their gifts!

The gifts in question were generously donated by Toys for Tots, St. Luke’s Church, and the Westport Police Department. From newborns to 13-year-olds, Carver kids are receiving toys picked for their age and interest.

Volunteers from St. Luke’s School and Brien McMahon High School have joined Tricia and Mary in spreading the holiday cheer. As the afternoon rolls on, all hands are on deck to put gifts under trees and smiles on faces!

Pictured: Brien McMahon High School Volunteers and Future Readiness Coordinator, Rayshonda Mitchell. Left to right: Doulsina Sandoval, Darlah Lapommeray, Ashley Fernandez, Rayshonda Mitchell, Isabel Muñoz, Cynthia Sainrilus.

New Canaan High School Service League of Boys bring holiday cheer to Carver kids!

New Canaan's SLOBs visit Carver youth periodically to bring good fun and cheer.  Here they are decorating cookies with our CASPER youth at the Carver Community Center.

Founded in 2004, the New Canaan High School Service League of Boys (SLOBs) is a student/parent-run organization that fosters the parent-son relationship in a philanthropic organization committed to community service, leadership development, and education. It is an organization of parents and sons who join together in service and educational endeavors to foster community responsibility and strengthen the parent-son relationship.

Their mission is "for parents and sons to initiate and promote educational and charitable endeavors that foster community responsibility and leadership as well as strengthen the parent-son relationship."  

They serve approximately 30 philanthropic organizations with over 65 different projects. We are grateful that Carver is among their charitable commitments! 

BIC donates more than 1,000 pens to EJ's H.E.A.R.T and to Carver kids

While EJ’s H.E.A.R.T Inc. (Helping Educate Adolescents Reach True Success) is an independent charity, it is also at the heart of the Carver community. Its co-founder, Tremain Gilmore, is Carver’s longtime Teen Center manager.

As you can see in the video below, Tremain and his wife and foundation co-founder, Fritzsa, are celebrities!

Another Carver hero is BIC. Carver afterschool students Alaysia Ashley, Fanendra Auvelus, Matthew Hazzard, Elijah Lesperance, Brook Nash, Anthony Delon, and others joined together recently to receive a vast BIC donation of pens. A portion of this generous in-kind donation benefits Carver’s afterschool programming at the Carver Community Center, and the donation balance was distributed to other Norwalk youth by EJ’s H.E.A.R.T.

Carver’s beloved Tremain and Fritzsa Gilmore appeared on the Ellen Show with guest host Tiffany Haddish and regular cohost Stephen Laurel "tWitch" Boss.

The finale of Ellen DeGeneres' daytime talk series aired on May 26. Ellen DeGeneres pulled out all the celebrity stops for the final episodes of her daytime talk series.

Who better to invite to the show than Fritzsa and Gil?! How did the Ellen Show find our Norwalk heroes?

The Carver community enthusiastically nominated them.

With the invention of its Cristal® pen in 1950, BIC democratized handwriting in classrooms on a global scale. For the first time in history, an affordable, high-quality writing instrument was made accessible to every student in every corner of the world. Today, the spirit of this ingeniously simple product and the essential role writing instruments play in helping children receive a quality education is at the heart of the Company's Global Education Week initiative, which this year provided a product donation of 2.5 million pens and pencils to schools and others in need around the world.

BIC's Global Education Week, now in its fifth year, is an education-based charitable initiative that mobilizes the Company's global workforce to help improve learning conditions for students.

We are deeply grateful to Ka’Ran Housey and Jennifer Gilchrist for nominating us to receive over 1,000 pens.

We often write here about Tremain’s many roles and accomplishments and the couple’s EJ’s H.E.A.R.T. charity.

Thank you everyone for making the holidays special for Carver kids and their families!

Reese Gay, Keira McLean, Abby Friedman, and Melissa Pappas are members of the Service League Of Girls at Staples High School

We will be hosting our annual Carver Community Holiday Party this evening at the Carver Community Center, where there will be games, dancing, snacks, gifts, and a visit from Santa Claus!

At the party, all guests aged 13 and younger will receive a gift donated by the community.

In order to make this possible, volunteers from the National Charity League, Campbell Snacks, our Rowayton friends, members of the Service League Of Girls at Staples High School, and many other volunteers helped to wrap a mountain of gifts this year.

The 11th-grade class at St. Luke’s School will help to pass the gifts out at the party.

Carver has many friends who commit to help advance the Carver mission year after after — and we are grateful!

Holiday thanks and good cheer to everyone!

Rowayton Fire Department's Annual Toy Drive results in mountains of joy for Carver kids

Joan is the one wearing the Christmas Tree hat!

As they do each year, the Rowayton Fire Department collected a fire truck full of toys and other gifts for Carver kids.

This annual Santa Run was renamed THE MIKE BARBIS SANTA TOY DRIVE to honor the toy drive co-founder Mike Barbis, Rowayton’s late commissioner and longtime Carver friend and advocate. Among his many commitments to the Carver community, the Toy Drive was one of Mike’s favorites.

The other co-founder, Joan DeRegt, delivered all the donated gifts to the Carver Community Center today. These mountains of joy constituted this holiday season’s veritable “plum pudding stuffed with good things.” Rowayton’s volunteer fire department has been bringing great fun and wonder to Norwalk’s children for over 20 years.

Gifts include toys, sporting equipment, books, and gift cards. This is love in action, something Carver volunteer Joan is about all year.

The magic of this holiday season never ends, and its greatest gifts are friends like Joan and her generous team of Rowayton volunteers. The love these volunteers put into their giving keeps us all young and hopeful!

Local businesses, let us help you achieve key business goals by engaging Carver-paid interns!

We believe education must go beyond the classroom to prepare students for college, career, and life.

Carver provides pathways — paid internships — to career success for our 11th and 12th-grade students through skills training, meaningful work experiences, and impactful relationships.

We envision a future where all young adults are equipped and empowered with the knowledge and skills required to achieve career success, upward mobility, and a lifetime of economic self-sufficiency.

Our partnerships with leading companies and organizations, such as Norwalk Hospital, are vital to fulfilling our mission to provide pathways to career success for young adults. By providing equitable access to meaningful work opportunities, leading companies are instrumental in breaking down the barriers to economic opportunity for our students.

As high schoolers, Carver students receive business skills training, meaningful paid internships, and college and career counseling. Carver fuels their ambition so that their dreams become lifelong realities.

Investing in paid internships for Norwalk’s aspiring high school students is investing in a network that leads to a more equitable, diverse, and inclusive community. Our work affects students and profoundly impacts their families, workplaces, and society.

The Fairfield County Business Collaborative for Education Equity is one of our partners in Carver’s workforce development initiative.

Please help us create a future where all young people, regardless of race, ethnicity, or socio-economic status, have an equal chance to reach their full potential.

Volunteer Julia Berg shares how CASPER students color and discuss an enchanting spin on an old tale

By Julia Berg

In the K-2 classroom at the Carver Community Center, a couple of girls illustrate rainbows and hearts on the purple and blue construction paper they selected. They draw the rainbow using markers as well as the colored pencils and crayons found in one of their pencil cases. Camilla, sitting beside them, draws a grassy landscape on the orange paper she chose.

Soon after, our program director Waid enters to read aloud a book to the students. He reads one that a student picked out titled “Over the River and Through the Wood,” which is a fun take on the poem of the same name by Lydia Maria Francis Child with fantastical illustrations by David Catrow.

The book tells the story of a family’s trip to their grandparents’ house for Thanksgiving and is primarily written in enclosed rhymes, which he asks the students to identify after each section. After he finishes reading the book, Waid asks each student for one thing they liked about it. The students discuss the rhymes, the snow, the balloons, the gorilla, and the pumpkin pie at the end that caught their eye.

Volunteer Julia Berg tells us lively stories about our summer and after-school students at the Carver Community Center. See more of her stories here.

BoardLead selects Carver as a charity worthy of the best board members

BoardLead is an online platform that introduces executives and employees from its corporate and strategic partner networks to nonprofits seeking board members. They work at the intersection of nonprofits and corporations to connect diverse and talented professionals with nonprofit board service opportunities that make a difference.

With BoardsLead’s assistance, Carver can expand and diversify our board development network by accessing cause-aligned and talented professionals to meet our governance needs. BoardLead significantly reduces the time it takes to find, vet, and elect impact-ready board members.

Corporations gain a trusted partner to support their HR-Talent and CSR teams in all things nonprofit board placement, training, and support. They get the support they need to improve employee retention and satisfaction and accomplish their corporate goals.

Professionals gain leadership experience toward advancing their career goals and connect to new networks while helping advance a cause that’s meaningful to them. BoardLeaders receive robust good governance training at the outset of their tenure and have ongoing access to 1:1 coaching and support.

BoardLead elevates and transforms governance in the social good sector through the collective impact of our BoardLeaders. Every BoardLead candidate is asked to stretch themselves, committing to a high standard of full­ engagement. By meeting this standard of excellence, BoardLeaders demonstrate that they have the dedication required to rise to board leadership positions and increase their impact.

Thank you, BoardLead!

Give to Carver kids on Giving Tuesday, 11/29!

GivingTuesday is a global generosity movement unleashing the power of radical generosity. GivingTuesday was created in 2012 as a simple idea: a day that encourages people to do good. Since then, it has grown into a year-round global movement that inspires millions of people to give, collaborate, and celebrate generosity.

From a viral hashtag to a global movement, #GivingTuesday is reimagining a world built upon shared humanity and generosity.