Micah Children's Initiative
- Jan 22, 2024
- 4 min read
Updated: Feb 10
Winter 2026 Update
The holiday season was a whirl of activities and fun at the O’Brien School in East Hartford. Our in-class volunteers and leaders enjoyed helping the teachers and staff as the semester drew to a close. Thanksgiving time featured a fun night of Turkey Bingo, a game night and auction. Our volunteers helped with a Holiday Store where the kids shopped for gifts, teaching them how to think of others and delight in the act of giving. We also assisted with their Pie Sale and the book sale in the library. With MCI funds and the shopping prowess of our team, we were able to supply 25 bags of supplemental food to help families manage through the Christmas break. And you should see the wonderful car magnets they have, due to a generous donor friend of Ellen McNab!
And our ongoing work continues –
· Giving of budgeted funds to enhance the children’s learning with help from our team facilitators
· Supporting enrichment experiences for growth and cultural learning
· Developing relationships with the newly formed PTO
· Establishing our role in support of Whole School, Whole Child, Whole Community (WSCC), a district-wide initiative.
As always, we keep emergency food and uniform clothing stocked at the school, recruit volunteers and offer assistance where we can. Our team has great fun, and takes satisfaction from being able to help these children as part of our family. If this sounds fun, please contact us!
Contact: Volunteers are always needed. To get involved, or to find out more, please contact Nancy Pacht at nrwp0503@yahoo.com or Jen Anglim (for questions specific to in-person volunteering) at anglimjennifer@yahoo.com.
About the Micah Children's Initiative
We believe in the inherent dignity, worth and value of every child and their right to a good education. It troubles us to live in a region where the local tax base plays an outsized role in the educational support that children receive. Through the generosity of our congregation, we provide volunteers and material support as we partner with the children and staff of O'Brien School.
Over the last several years we have opened a clothing closet with school uniforms and winter apparel, read remotely to students for the United Way’s Read for the Record program, conducted teacher appreciation events and cleaned the school courtyard. We have also donated children's books and other classroom materials, purchased water bottles for each student, provided COVID-19 safety supplies and added a new welcome banner to the school entrance.
We have committed to the East Hartford Public Schools that our partnership will be collaborative, supportive, multi-faceted, needs-based, participatory, well-funded, sustainable and strategic, and we envision in the coming decades a continuing blossoming of this relationship.
Capital Campaign 2022
In his address to the Second Annual Meeting of the Southern New England Conference
(SNEC), our Executive Conference Minister, Rev. Darrell Goodwin, challenged us to be
the Church that wants to be noticed! Our founders chose to locate our Meetinghouse
in the center of Glastonbury and decided to rebuild it after fire and hurricane with
the tall steeple so that townspeople would notice. We decided to renovate the Hale
House property into the Micah House and Chapel – a sacred space for spiritual
renewal, conversation and learning, engagement, discipleship and worship – so our community would notice. We chose to enter into covenant with many other UCC
congregations to be in community with all children of God as an open, welcoming
and affirming congregation. And, we chose to implement the recommended mission
endeavor of a school-church partnership with the East Hartford Public Schools
(EHPS) and their O’Brien School.
What do all these choices have in common? When we choose to be noticed,
what do we start with? The answer is a lot of trust – in our leadership, in ourselves and in God – yet still, a leap of faith. What will we look like at the end, how will we be changed, can we really do this? These are all questions that might be asked at the beginning of any major new initiative. But we confidently asked the EHPS to leap with us in a collaborative, multi-faceted, needs-based, participatory, well-funded, sustainable and
strategic partnership. We chose O’Brien over other options for the opportunity to change the lives of children, to make a difference in our community and world – to be noticed.
During the pandemic, we began to lay the foundation for this transformative partnership.
Our work so far is only the tip of the iceberg in what we envision for our long-term
partnership. Initiatives funded are guided by the needs of the O’Brien students and community.
Even through the difficulties of a pandemic, our MCI team laid the foundation for
improving the education and the lives of the O’Brien children: providing water bottles
to each child, collecting gently used books for our kindergarten cohort, hanging a new
welcome banner at the school entrance, conducting a teacher appreciation event with
yummy cupcakes, opening a clothing closet with Hartford Foundation grant funds we
were awarded, sprucing up the school courtyard and reading remotely for the United
Way’s Read for the Record program. There is so much more to do, so much more we can
do, and we are only limited by the time and talents of First Church volunteers.
