Top 12 LIVE UNITED Moments of 2014

As we celebrate the holiday season and a new year ahead, we look back at some of our favorite moments of the year and celebrate all that our partners, volunteers, and donors have helped accomplish in our community. Thank you for Living United!

1. Seeing the impact of 500 volunteers distributing 100,000 pounds of food and helping 25,000 people for the Thanksgiving Project

2. Watching New England Patriots players take a salsa lesson from teens at our partners Hyde Square Task Force after helping renovate their dance studio

3. Pioneering a “Pay for Success” effort to reduce chronic homelessness with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and other key partners

4. Telling four teens who had never traveled far outside of Lynn that their community project had earned them a trip to India

5. Joining Mayor Walsh to open the Center for Financial Empowerment in Roxbury (closely followed by new financial stability centers opening in Quincy and Lynn!)

6. Skyping with 13 amazing young people and sharing the news they would be able to go to college, many of them the first in their families, with the help of United Way’s scholarship program

7. Taking over the MBTA and the Registry of Motor Vehicles and turning them into Brain Building in Progress Zones with the Department of Early Education and Care.

8. Throwing a Community Baby Shower for 100 expecting mothers in Roxbury with our Women’s Leadership Council

9. Sitting alongside 6 groups of eager young filmmakers as they saw their work projected on a 50-foot screen at the second annual Granite Youth Film Festival

10. Announcing our 2015 funding plan to award $34.4 million to support community partners and strategies to increase school readiness, prevent high-school dropout and create more opportunities to lift families out of poverty

11. Working with 400 dedicated volunteers to carefully select the best possible community partners to help change lives

12. Celebrating the impact of more than 60,000 individual donors, volunteers, community and corporate partners at the LIVE UNITED Spirit Awards