Dear Shepherds Friend,

With just a little over three months to go in this school year, our successful 2020 COVID motto, Adapt, Innovate and Overcome is graduating early. From lessons learned over the past year and new skills developed, we celebrate a new sense of community in the Shepherds family. Building on the past and looking ahead, we inaugurating our new motto, “We’re Better Together.”

This health crisis has forced us to take stock of what is important and, more importantly, who is important in our lives. There has been nothing ‘extra’ during the past year. Everyone has been forced to winnow our personal contacts and activities to the bare essential – to the crucial.

The Shepherds team recognizes more than ever your indispensable role in our mission of closing the education opportunity gap in Fairfield and New Haven counties.

On behalf of the Shepherds Board and Staff, I want to take this opportunity to recognize and thank our mentors, families, school liaisons and school partners for pulling together and making this past school year a successful one, despite the challenges faced on so many levels. Each one of you is part of our critical ‘pod’, ensuring the success of our program for our Shepherds Students. There is still more work to be done.

As we are hopeful about the end of this health crisis with vaccines rolling out at a steady clip, Shepherds is already looking to the future by planning for the fall of 2021 by lining up mentors and financial resources for the incoming class. Circling back to our motto of We’re Better Together, we would like to ask that you become Shepherds Ambassadors by sharing information about our program with individuals like yourself who want to make a big impact on high school students in their own backyard. We will be sending a Spread the Word About Shepherds Tool Kit in another email soon. We appreciate any assistance you can give us.

Working together, we believe the future is bright for current Shepherds Students and the incoming class of 2025. Real change is more than any one of us can do alone – but it’s not more than all of us can do TOGETHER.

 

Cheers..

Dan McAuliffe

Executive Director