Making a positive difference.

Greetings and Salutations my friends,

This week I had the chance to be involved in multiple projects that helped the residents of the North Haven and East Haven communities. The first being a Food Drive that I helped to organize on behalf of Montowese Baptist Church to benefit the North Haven Food Bank.

During the course of the event I had the opportunity to meet many of North Haven's residents and as I spoke with the residents of that community I became aware of the fact that even though North Haven and East Haven are two separate communities we share very similar problems. In addition I became aware of the solutions to solving the problems that North Haven residents faced.

North Haven Resident and State Senate Candidate Steve Fontana was kind enough to stop by the Food Drive and it was a pleasure to speak with him as he has such a pure passion for helping people it is truly inspiring.

At the end of the day we managed to raise $500.00 and a mountain of food to help the residents of North Haven who rely upon the services provided by the North Haven Food Bank. Montowese Baptist Church will be holding another food drive to benefit the residents on June 2 at Stop and Shop on Washington Avenue. I will be part of that event as well as hosting a two day event on August 4th and 5th here in East Haven to benefit the East Haven Food Pantry and help our neighbors in need. Please save those dates on your calendars and help me help our neighbors in need and make this a successful event to help the East Haven Food Pantry.

On Sunday May 6, I attended the first ever East Haven Latino Festival and although I have often disagreed with Mayor Joesph Maturo on various subjects, I must admit it was refreshing to see the Mayor attend this event as the elected leader of the East Haven community and interact with the residents who attended the event.

We had a brief conversation and then went our seperate ways as I was volunteering to register new voters who wished to become involved in our towns political process and I even had the chance to speak with people who attended the event from Shelton and as far away as Maryland.

This event had it's share of flaws such as no roadside signage directing residents and other attendes to where the Expo was being held and in my opinion that may have hurt the overall attendance of the event as I personally feel that the event could have easily brought more people into take part in it if it were better promoted.

From what I have been told the Latino Expo will return next year and when it does I will be once again in attendence to take part in the event and meet my fellow East Haven residents and continue to make new friends and share in the new experiences that events like these bring with them.

I thank you for taking the time to read my blog and invite you to join me on Facebook at Robert D.Hoff for a better East Haven. Together we can help build our community from within and make it into the best it can be for all East Haven residents.