In last month's article, I wrote about some of the community connections that boosted our summer programming at Neighborhood House. This fall, one of our most important community connections gets underway.

It is United Way campaign time, and the United Way volunteers and staff members are working hard to meet this year's goal of $1,375,000. All of the money raised by the campaign stays in Cayuga County to provide essential services to people in need. The 21-member agencies and associated partners (such as Success by 6 and the Human Service Coalition) rely on the assistance from the United Way to carry out our work all year long.

This work benefits many Cayuga County residents of all ages, from infants to senior citizens.

This year's volunteer chairs, Tom and Jean Lewis, know firsthand how any family can suddenly and unexpectedly need the help of a United Way agency, and how important the services these agencies provide can be. It is inspiring the way that these parents are honoring the too short life of their son Christian by their leadership of this year's campaign.

This year's campaign motto is “Making a Difference Together” and that is what all of the agencies supported by the United Way work hard to do every day. We all know well that our United Way allocations are only possible because of the work of many volunteers and the generous gifts of many local residents. Whether the needed service is in response to an emergency, or is on-going, such as the early childhood education we offer at Neighborhood House, the support from the United Way truly makes the difference to the agencies who provide these essential services.

Many United Way agencies also boost our work at Neighborhood House. The Red Cross provides our First Aid and CPR training. Our children benefit from presentations from SAVAR (personal safety), CHAD (chemical resistance/healthy choices) and Options for Independence (disability awareness). The Child Care Council manages the city and United Way subsidies that assist some parents with paying for child care expenses.

For a successful campaign, each and every gift is important. Along with many other groups, employees of the Auburn school district play an important role in the success of the campaign. I had the privilege of representing the United Way agencies at a presentation at Herman Avenue School last week.

Whenever I visit an elementary school, I see students who attended Neighborhood House as pre-schoolers and I am reminded of the important role we played in their development. Through our work as a site for Universal Pre-Kindergarten, we work closely with Assistant Superintendent Carolyn Hirst-Loucks and the other UPK providers. This year, the district purchased the Houghton Mifflin reading series for use in all UPK classrooms and is providing a teacher training session Oct. 19 to help teachers make the best use of the reading series. This investment reflects our district's commitment to meeting our literacy goals.

This commitment is also reflected in our participation of Jumpstart's Read for the Record on Sept. 20. The goal was for thousands of classrooms to read the classic tale, “The Story of Ferdinand,” on the same day, with the goal of furthering efforts to bring preschool children and caring adults together to build the literacy, social and emotional skills children need to thrive. The Neighborhood House teachers welcomed the opportunity to share this wonderful story about being true to oneself with their children. The effort was successful, and Jumpstart broke the record for the greatest shared reading experience ever - more than 258,000 (and counting!) children participated at 1,900 events nationwide.

Also taking place this month at Neighborhood House is our Fall Festival. Two years ago, we developed an anti-bias holiday policy, thanks to the leadership of our program coordinator, Penny Lupo. This simply means that we will be respectful of all families by not celebrating holidays in the traditional way. We will instead focus on seasonal learning activities. Rather than a scary, sugary, overwhelming one-day Halloween celebration for example, our children will enjoy a multi-day learning celebration called Fall Festival.

We will explore the gooey insides of pumpkins, find pumpkins in our own patch, count and graph pumpkin seeds, jump on straw bales, shuck corn, check out the patterns of candy corn, have a parade and compare and contrast gourds and mini-pumpkins. As always, Linda, our cook, gets involved with the celebration by planning classic “fall” treats such as corn casserole and pumpkin roll.

By creating a multi-day fall festival, we preserve all of the fun of a typical celebration while reducing much of the stress felt by children and teachers and emphasizing the learning aspect of the activities in a very fun way.

Another important community connection that takes place in the fall is the visit from members of the Auburn Fire Department. As we celebrate Fire Prevention Week, the children are very interested to see a firefighter change from a friendly looking person in street clothes to one wearing full gear and breathing with an airpack. Seeing this transformation may someday save the life of one of our children, and we are very grateful to our fire department for making these important visits.

Our community connections are important to the future of our center. On behalf of everyone at Neighborhood House, I send warm wishes for a happy and healthy fall season.

Susan Jones is executive director for the Neighborhood House in Auburn.