The Champion         

Campaign E-News  

How We Are Meeting Goal

July 2010   Vol 3, Issue II

A letter from Mr. Chuck Clarke, Honorary Campaign Chair 

Hello and welcome to the Village's Champions for Children Bicentennial Campaign e-newsletter. Aswe begin the last summer season of our three-year, 5 million dollar campaign, we are also inching closer toward reaching our goal of the campaign set to end June 2011. Accordingly, we want everyone to know how our cooperative efforts and positive forward momentum is keeping us on track toward making the Village's Bicentennial Campaign a real success.

Despite our current and upbeat levels of accomplishment, however, we need to encourage more individuals from the community to become Champions for Children. We are looking for individuals who will become actively involved with their support of the Village, its critical programs, and its commitment to the children of greater Hartford. For those of you who have not yet pledged an annual gift but have the means to help Hartford's most vulnerable children, we want you to learn more about the campaign and how your gift will immediately benefit the children served by the Village.

Back in 2008, one of the four campaign priorities set by the Village Board of Directors was Home For Good. Adoption and foster care is the most enduring legacy of the Village and throughout the agency's history, tens of thousands of children have been placed into warm, stable and loving homes. As a Bicentennial Campaign priority, Home For Good will expand the Village services that train and help foster care and adoptive parents care for those children who need that special attention and extra compassion.

Whether for a short period of time, in the Village's residential facility, or on a permanent basis as a Village adoptee, the children who are waiting for a caring home and family also need the compassionate support of a Champion. The Bicentennial Campaign is an opportunity for all of us to come together and help Hartford's neediest children by providing them with the adequate treatment and resources that will promote their positive development and success.

If you are already a Champion for Children, thank you! If you would like to become a Champion, make your gift today and help the Village continue to provide the hopeful futures these children deserve.

Chuck Clarke

Vice Chair, Travelers

Honorary Chair

Champions for Children Bicentennial Campaign

Where We Are in the Campaign!

July 2008     September 2009     June 2010     June 2011 Goal     Donor Profile:   Connie & Larry Gavrich: A Champion Team Supporting Home For Good

Every child deserves the opportunity to grow up within a loving family.  Institutional care is not an appropriate substitute. Adoption is.

Connie Gavrich was only three weeks old when Timothy and Betty Goumas became her adoptive parents through the auspices of a New York City agency. Connie's adoptive father later died when she was just three years old; she credits her mother with providing all the security, support and love she needed as a child.

As Connie grew and went on to finish college and graduate school, the close bond she shared with her mother and extended family provided her with the model to develop her own positive relationships with others, forge a successful professional career, and eventually become a successful parent of two children, now both in college. Betty had helped her daughter 'find her place in this world' by nurturing her strengths and giving her the confidence to succeed. And during the last years of Betty's life, Connie provided the same devotion to her mother as her mother had for her.

Today, Connie and Larry Gavrich share the same desire to help other children who need a Home for Good. As a Village Board Member since 2004, Larry understands the profoundly positive effects the Village's most enduring programs have had on children and their adoptive families for more than 200 years. When Connie and Larry sought to memorialize Connie's mother Betty, who died in 2004, they could find no more appropriate tribute than to support the adoption of children through the Village. "She did so much for me despite all the challenges she faced as a single parent," says Connie, "and together we accomplished a lot. I wanted that example to be remembered."

As a member of The Village's Executive Committee, Larry participated in discussions and the final decision to launch the organization's first major fund-raising campaign in its history. As their personal commitment to the campaign, Connie and Larry, who serves on the Bicentennial Campaign Steering Committee, added substantially to the Betty Goumas Memorial Fund.

The Gavriches are Champions for Children because of their support and compassionate belief that every child belongs in a permanent and caring home. They are strong supporters of the mission of the Village, and their financial support of the Home for Good campaign priority funds the training of foster care and adoptive parents, as well as outreach services the parents must often call upon.

"We are both quite conscious of all the positives in our life and the things that our own children have been able to enjoy," says Larry. "That has elevated our consciousness about children who may not have had the same fortunate start in life, and that is another reason why we have made our gift to the campaign."