Yesterday... and tomorrow

NVP’S VICTORIES AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS: 1984-2009

    General Time Controls – organized employees and religious leaders to have one line of production sold to a local buyer when the Thomaston company was shut down

    Uniroyal Rubber – organized congregations and employees of the Naugatuck company to protect retirement benefits, including healthcare and pension plan.

    Seymour Specialty Wire Company – organized an employee buyout to create the largest democratically owned industrial firm in the nation from 1984 to 1991

    Reymond's Bakery – worked with the union to secure the “right of first refusal” for employees to purchase the bakery when it was sold, setting a national precedent

    Bristol Babcock – NVP’s organizing campaign strengthened the union and prevented the workers from granting unwarranted concessions demanded by the company

    Berkeley Heights Tenant Council – organized public housing residents to create a Tenants Council and to secure complete renovations of the apartment buildings, eliminating common hallways so the housing was safer for all residents.

    Naugatuck Supermarket – organized congregations to secure a new supermarket to improve access to food for low-income residents in an area of town without a grocery store.

    Naugatuck Valley Housing Development Corporation – created a community land trust to pursue development of permanently affordable housing in the Valley

    Brookside Housing Cooperatives - organized to win the construction of 102 units of permanently affordable, cooperatively owned, democratically controlled, limited equity cooperative housing in Waterbury

    Valley Care Cooperative – created an employee-owned home care company which provided high quality, low cost health care and employed over 80 people

    Waterbury Seniors/Grocery Committee – organized downtown residents to secure free van transportation to outlying grocery stores and later helped secure the new Shaw’s Supermarket

    Multi-Metals Training Center – worked with local manufacturers and Waterbury Adult Education to create a model job training program that has placed hundreds of workers in the eyelet and screw machine industries

    Neighborhood Blight – through creative actions, including a “Badder Homes and Gardens Tour”, secured a City Blight Officer and a new police precincts in Waterbury

    UConn Torrington – organized to save this branch of the university from closure

    Thomaston Area Youth Activities Council (TAYAC) – organized to create a youth center with a variety of programs for area youth, spurring youth and parents into action

    Naugatuck Valley Brownfields Pilot – led the effort to secure federal pilot status and funding for a regional effort to clean up and redevelop abandoned and polluted industrial sites, including the redevelopment of a brass factory in Thomaston, bringing brass production and jobs back to the community in 2000

    Waterbury’s Inner-City Neighborhoods – organized a network of religious, tenant and neighborhood leaders in the inner-city neighborhoods of Waterbury concerned about critical community reinvestment issues such as abandoned housing, inadequate policies services, lack of recreational space

    Waterbury Housing Coalition (WHC) – NVP partnered with Neighborhood Housing Services and Mutual Housing Association of South Central Connecticut to create the WHC to rehab 33 units of housing on Willow Street and Chestnut Avenue that is affordable, safe and clean

    Tax Relief for Low-Income Residents – provided the City of Waterbury with an Economic Impact Study prepared by Amadon & Associates; Professor John Clapp from the University of Connecticut; and Nicholas Carbone, retired president of the Connecticut Institute for Municipal Studies, to determine the impact of shifting the burden of taxes to residential property owners by examining residents’ ability to pay the higher taxes by estimating the resulting increase in the number of delinquencies.  NVP empowered the city of Waterbury to create a $2.49 million tax circuit breaker giving tax relief to low-income families

    Latino Caucus & Volunteer Translation Office – created the Latino/Hispanic Resource Center (LHRC) in Derby, which provides referral interpretation services on a volunteer basis to 1,000 people per year, and an important link between newer immigrants and local social service agencies

    NVP Youth Empowerment – along with St. John of the Cross Church in Middlebury, conducted Youth Leadership Trainings for three summers at Westover School in Middlebury bringing together over 100 youth from diverse backgrounds and 10 different towns in the Valley

    Predatory Lending/Unfair Trade Practices – brought over 75 cases to the Connecticut State Attorney General who then brought a suit against four major Waterbury predatory lenders and realtors, which resulted in over 45 cases charging predatory lending and consumer fraud; the suit settled for $750,000

    Environmental Remediation Technician Training Program – worked to get an agreement from two district Workforce Investment Boards to create an environmental remediation technician training program at Naugatuck Valley Community College, to train Valley residents in its first year to clean up the Valley's 189 brownfield sites

    Public Act 07-185 - in collaboration with a statewide coalition, won the passage of a healthcare bill by the Connecticut legislature that included $4.7 million in Medicaid reimbursement for medical interpretation services; as well as empowering this group to form an official Medical Interpreting Association of Connecticut to set statewide standards which was inaugurated in June 2007

    Medical Interpretation Services - won Griffin Hospital’s hiring of a Radiology Department staff member to serve the Polish community; complementing the part-time Spanish/English interpreters previously hired by Griffin and Charlotte-Hungerford Hospitals; won agreement from 3 of 4 Valley hospitals to install videoconferencing medical interpretation services, to further improve interpretation service for LEP patients; reached at least 7500 Limited English Proficient (LEP) residents, in person and through public access television, through our Health Care Navigation Training, which uses community volunteers to teach LEP speakers how to navigate the health care system and about their right to medical interpretation