A thank you to readers
Carolina Ahumada has the enthusiasm of a game show contestant on a hot streak.
It’s in the way her words race each other as though under pressure from a ticking timer. Or the way she punches the word “love,” as in “I don’t like my job, I LOVE it.”
And, like any successful game show contestant, it’s in her jubilation over the winnings.
What makes Ahumada’s exuberance unique is that hers is ignited whenever she recalls giving money to others.
As manager of the Family First in Education program run by Family Centers, Ahumada is one of the staff members who delivers Giving Fund grants to clients. Every holiday season since 1983, the Stamford Advocate and Greenwich Time have published stories about anonymous residents in hopes of raising donations from readers to fill small gaps in their lives.
The clients don’t know they’ve been nominated for the gifts. This way, there is no potential disappointment. That anxiety is endured by Ahumada and her colleagues. Their work is never easy, so occasions to deliver gifts are among their better days.
“I wish I could record all their reactions for those tougher days,” she says.
Then she shares highlights from her mental recordings.
Some cry. A few scream. Before COVID mandated masks, others just stood there with mouths agape.
They are often so surprised that she finds herself holding out her hand and encouraging them to “Please take this check.”
“And honestly, it’s the best feeling.”
If you could use a shot of those good vibrations, consider this. In this Age of Dissent in America, the quaint, bordering on twee, Giving Fund was more successful in 202021 than ever before.
The first campaign, in 1983-84, raised $17,229. That number kept climbing before a peak of $112,000 in 2000, the end of the dotcom boom years. By 2012, donations had dipped to $84,000.
In more recent years, it has been wrapping up at just over $50,000. The current campaign stands at $113,000 and counting, a testament
If you could use a shot of those good vibrations, consider this. In this Age of Dissent in America, the quaint, bordering on twee, Giving Fund was more successful in 2020-21 than ever before.
to profound empathy for struggling neighbors within our communities.
The two ends of the Fairfield County wealth gap, commonly defined as the widest in the nation, met as an anonymous local donor made a pledge to match dollar-fordollar every donation made up to $30,000.
Donations exceeded the initial requests, allowing Family Centers and Person-to-Person to fulfill even more cases. The need, of course, is bottomless.
Ahumada, who lives in Stamford, has a unique vantage point of the wealth gap as she navigates the tightrope across it. In Greenwich, perennially stereotyped as a synonym for wealth, her program provides after-school programs for students up to fifth grade at Hamilton Avenue, Julian Curtiss and New Lebanon schools.
In this harshest of economic times, signals of generosity came during a mirror campaign we launched in the spring to help families facing financial collapse in the immediate wake of the COVID-19 outbreak. That fund, which nicked the “Help-a-Neighbor” name we used back in 1983, raised nearly $60,000 between March and its conclusion in June. Following tradition, the Giving Fund launched on Thanksgiving.
Ahumada watched the crisis unfold through the eyes of her clients, many of whom work cleaning homes or in construction.
“Things just completely stopped.” She pauses before adding words that don’t really need to be said. “And so did their income.”
She found delivering the Help-aNeighbor checks “really overwhelming and also very validating.”
Validating because the clients, like ones I’ve heard about from Ahumada’s peers in the past, reliably express gratitude. One mom sent Ahumada a photograph of her child in a winter coat she was able to buy with part of the gift.
“Look what we got with what you gave us.”
The gift of warmth.
For some, it pays the heating bill, the electric bill, the rent, or is used to buy food. It’s usually a bridge, but can also represent an exit door. Ahumada has noticed some of her families just needed that bit of extra money to escape an unpleasant living situation.
“Those are the cases that are the most meaningful,” she says.
She explains that in many cases, “Being able to just provide them a little bit of financial support alleviates a whole bag of stress.”
Ahumada laughs when I ask her to repeat the “bag of stress” phrasing. It’s a good expression. Readers have been able to lighten the load, filling the bags instead with kindness. With hope.
We keep returning to the theme of gratitude among these families, forever anonymous to their benefactors. So I’m not surprised by Ahumada’s parting words.
“Thank them from us,” she insists, her enthusiasm sparked again. “Thank the readers.”