Today we continue our deeper dive showcasing how local agencies and human service programs are maintaining, surviving, and continuing to serve in a COVID-19 world.

First, we'll reach out to anyone who is feeling anxious, angry, sad, scared or alone during the current pandemic - to bring you an information packed and hopefully stress reducing conversation with the Executive Director of NAMI Connecticut.

Then we'll learn about a Connecticut company owner who created a not-for-profit program - masksforcitizens.com - to get masks to regular folks who need them while reducing the need to divert PPE away from medical workers and responders. 

And we'll close with the Connecticut Council on Environmental Quality. We'll hit a few high points of the CEQ's annual report to the Governor - aimed at keeping environmental preservation and protection efforts in focus even while he's dealing with the COVID-19 emergency.

We'll engage the new Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion and Chief Diversity Officer at the University of New Haven - Lorenzo Boyd - who also heads up the UNH Center for Advanced Policing, for the first of a couple of conversations we're planning around police practices, movements to de-fund police agencies, and the crossover points where racial diversity intersects with community policing.

Then we'll talk arts and humanities with the director of CT Humanities - and find out how this decades old agency is reinventing itself as a digital and community resource, while supporting and funding intriguing programs and projects across the state.

And we'll close with our partners at the CT Coalition Against Domestic Violence. If anything, the COVID pandemic has made things harder for the thousands of intimate partner and domestic abuse victims across Connecticut, so we'll touch base and get a snapshot of what's been happening in terms of prevention and response over the past few months.

We're kicking off 2021 with State Comptroller Kevin Lembo talking about a new “Network of Distinction” program designed to achieve the dual goals of lowering overall health costs and achieving better outcomes. Are you one of the roughly quarter million state residents benefiting - stay tuned and find out.

Then we'll circle back to chat with the Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness (CCEH) to find out how the agency did with its annual Be Homeful for the Holidays activities, what a difference it will make countering the state's homeless stats, and we'll hear about the agency's most recent collaborations with the CT Council of Municipalities and Sustainable CT.