SHARON — When Sharon Hospital was sold to for-profit Essent Healthcare Inc. in June 2003, state law required that the $16 million in proceeds be transferred to a nonprofit organization with a similar purpose — to promote healthier individuals and communities.
To meet that mandate, Foundation for Community Health (FCH) was formed to steward that mostly unrestricted windfall for the benefit of the rural, 17-town region, where Northwest Connecticut and the Greater Harlem Valley in New York meet, served by the hospital.
Fast-forward two decades and the Sharon-based philanthropic organization, under the stewardship of Nancy Heaton, its president and CEO, has granted more than $21 million through 609 grants to 118 organizations and invested thousands of staff hours to support better health to communities, many of which have historically been underserved.
An auditor’s Dec. 31, 2022, financial statement showed the foundation’s total assets at $32.6 million.
In 2023 alone, FCH’s 20th anniversary, the foundation awarded more than $1.6 million in grants to 30 grantee partners, including $650,000 to help establish the North Canaan Health Center. Since 2017, FCH has awarded about $2 million toward the North Canaan Health Center. The long awaited opening is expected in spring 2024.
Support also extended beyond the grants. FCH helped its grantee partners secure $1.9 million in additional grant funding and nearly $36,000 toward programs. Eight executive directors received one-on-one leadership support, and four sessions of the foundation’s Community of Practice assisted nonprofit leaders.
“Our goal has really been more focused on strengthening the capacity and sustainability of these organizations so they can do their work more efficiently,” said Heaton.
Conditions that influence health span beyond medical care, such as access to food, safe and stable housing, and the opportunity for positive childhood experiences. According to FCH, “On average, 45 percent of renters in our community pay more than 35% of their income on housing.”
“The pandemic shone light on all the issues and cracks and needs, and how fractured our system is,” noted Natashea Winters, FCH’s director of programs and learning.
2023: a ‘year of newness’
Heaton described 2023 as “a year of newness,” with new tools to capture support beyond the grant, new community members including two new board members and one new staff member, and five new grantee partners.
Based on feedback from its grantee partners, FCH developed a Community of Practice for Nonprofit Leaders, offering one-to-one leadership support to executive directors of organizations. The foundation also helped grantee partners secure nearly $2 million in additional grant funding.
“I think it speaks to the value we can provide. We call it support beyond the grants,” Winters noted. “No two organizations are the same. It’s part of the uniqueness of our region and uniqueness of our foundation.”
Neither are the communities served by FCH the same. For instance, she said,“Dover is our largest community and our neediest community.”
The organization’s board of directors comprises representatives from throughout its vast region.
In 2023, two new faces joined the FCH board: Dover Plains, New York, resident Jill Fieldstein, business manager of the Louis August Jonas Foundation in Rhinebeck, New York; and Dr. Zachary McClain of Falls Village, medical director of the Wieler Health Center at The Hotchkiss School in Lakeville.
Extending support to nonprofits’ leaders
Last October, FCH granted $81,500 to eight nonprofits through its Capacity Building Grant Program. Since its start in 2021, the program has granted $423,070 to 21 organizations by supporting important work including strategic planning, infrastructure needs, leadership support and organizational restructuring,
FCH has been “a consistent supporter” of Greenwoods Counseling & Referrals Inc., which provides affordable mental health care, education and related services throughout Litchfield County, according to its executive director John Simoncelli.
The $15,000 grant his organization received from FCH last October helped with a much-needed expansion, Simoncelli explained.
“We’ve grown a lot in the seven years since I’ve been here. When we started, we had about four employees and now we have 25,” he explained. “We’ve maxed out our space in Litchfield.”
The recent grant was instrumental in the opening of a satellite office in Torrington, “and eventually in Winsted as well.” With the new offices, he said, comes a need to hire staff, rent the spaces and furnish them: “That’s what the money is being used for, these expansion efforts.”
Simoncelli praised the work of FCH. “They’ve been a part of our growth all along, and I can’t say enough about how they have evolved their grantmaking process. In my mind it has been revolutionary. I feel that Natashea has a great sense of what we do and how the money is being spent.”
Helping seniors, protecting immigrants
The Lakeville-based Chore Service Inc. was the recipient of a $12,000 grant from FCH last fall. The funding, said Executive Director Jane MacLaren, has been critical for helping seniors and disabled residents live safely and independently in their homes.
“Our federal funding has been reduced by 33%, which is difficult as the need is increasing. Last year we served 137 clients in seven towns and provided part-time work to 30 workers and 5,181 hours of service,” MacLaren noted.
“The foundation’s support has been instrumental to Chore’s commitment to increasing community impact, maintaining organizational health and long-term financial viability. Many people do not have the means to pay for services, so they call Chore. We provide services regardless of ability to pay, so for many, we are a last resort to remaining at home.”
A $15,000 Capacity Building Grant was also distributed to the Columbia County Sanctuary Movement in Hudson, New York.
“We are really grateful for this fund,” said Diana Laura Cruz, co-executive director of programs and services. “CCSM has experienced a rise in racist and xenophobic attacks against our immigrant community. Funds have been able to support our staff to rest and recover while also giving us the opportunity to train community members to keep us safe.”
This story has been updated to correct Natashea Winters' name and title.
Image courtesy of Foundation for Community Health
KK Kozik in her studio
It is a particularly fitting philosophy for an artist whose paintings often begin with the world around her but rarely end there. There might be something recognizable — a stone wall, an apple tree, a crow — but then there is something less certain. Something that appears to be one thing becomes another upon inspection. Memory gets involved. So does imagination. So does time.
Since moving from New York City to Sharon, Connecticut in 2006, the landscape around her has become increasingly important to that process.
“I just saw things differently,” Kozik said.
The change was not immediate. She remembers an earlier version of herself driving through Vermont without paying much attention to what was happening beyond the windshield.
“I didn’t have the means to see what was happening around me,” she said. “I just sort of la, la, la, la, la, driving to Vermont.”
But, she said, she started to pay attention differently.
“I became more sensitized as time went on,” she said.
Asked whether that change came with age, she said, “Age and so-called wisdom.”
There’s a sense of loss in her landscapes, but a particular kind of loss that also has a twinge of redemption. Specifically, what happens to a landscape when people leave it?
“When the people go away, the wildlife comes back,” Kozik said.
KK Kozik in her studio with her painting “Golden Delicious.”Natalia Zukerman
Kozik’s work has never settled into a single recognizable formula. She has painted landscapes, figures and still lifes, moved toward abstraction and returned to representation. Her subjects change, but the underlying impulse remains: to take what is in front of her and discover what else there might be.
Kozik describes herself as someone who is always trying to figure things out. Her paintings often have the feeling of a thought in progress rather than a conclusion. They have been called “single-line novellas,” a description that makes sense: They can contain the suggestion of an entire story without telling you exactly what happened.
The animals are part of that storytelling.
They arrived partly because of what was disappearing.
“They were like the new redemption in a way,” she said.
There is something almost funny about the way Kozik talks about this — not because the loss itself is funny, but because she refuses to turn it into a grand pronouncement. She observes something, considers it, and lets it complicate the work.
That same sensibility comes through when she talks about her own development as an artist. Her paintings make room for interpretation. They don’t always tell the viewer what an animal symbolizes, or why a landscape has been altered, or where a particular image came from. Instead, they leave enough evidence to make you curious and enough room for your own stories.
The effect is not accidental. Kozik has spent years thinking about how images work, both as paintings and as containers for ideas.
Her work is currently included in “The Naturalist,” a group exhibition on view through Sept. 13 at Kenise Barnes Fine Art in Kent, alongside Richard Klein, Sally Maca, Rick Shaefer and Tricia Wright. The exhibition brings together artists whose work engages with the natural world, including its forms, histories and mysteries.
Kozik is an especially apt fit for the exhibition. She is described by the gallery as a landscape painter, figurative painter and interiors/still-life painter whose work frequently moves toward painterly abstraction. Her practice, the gallery notes, is “fluid and continuous” — always searching for new pictorial problems to solve.
That search has also extended beyond her own studio.
For several years, Kozik ran ICEHOUSE Project Space, an 18th-century icehouse on Sharon’s town green that she transformed into an unusual venue for contemporary art. It opened in 2018 with Dan Devine’s “Inside-Out NASCAR” and went on to host site-specific projects by artists including Mark Dion, Eric Aho, Janet Biggs, Richard Klein, Kristin Jones, Lisa Hoke and Ryan Frank. The projects addressed everything from the decline of winged insects and native and invasive plants to Sharon’s iron industry, its gardens and its history as an ice-producing community.
The space is now closed, but its premise still feels connected to Kozik’s painting practice. Each project responded in some way to the physical location, turning what might otherwise have been a little historic outbuilding into a setting for contemporary art.
Kozik’s own work does something similar with the landscape. She takes a place and lets it become more than a place.
Kozik’s paintings tell us that something happened before we arrived, and that something will happen after we leave.
And then there is the question of what to do with the space in between.
Maybe Kozik’s paintings are less about that space and more about an idea, as she put it, of “which questions to think about.”
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Jazzmine Bone and A Stitch in Tyme power through the Gambler’s Choice run during the 2024 Lakeville Open.
The event, which has been held continuously for 69 years, is open to the public with free admission.
Individual competitions will run from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and visitors can stop by briefly or settle in for the day.
A food truck, bake sale and portable restrooms will be available on-site.
The show is the primary fundraiser for The Lakeville Pony Club, with proceeds supporting young riders who need financial assistance to participate in lessons. Members and their families work throughout the year to create the event for both competitors and spectators.
Members of the Lakeville Pony Club and Echo the pony arrive for the costume class during the Lakeville Open in 2024.Caitlin Von Graf
For those new to horse shows, the day offers a chance to learn more about the sport and understand what happens in the ring. In equitation competitions, judges evaluate the rider’s skill, from beginners learning walk and trot to more advanced riders navigating cantering and jumping courses.
Hunter competitions focus on the horse’s style and smoothness over fences, while jumper classes emphasize accuracy and speed as horses and riders race against the clock without knocking down rails.
The day also includes a crowd favorite: the costume class, where horses and riders dress up in creative ensembles for a chance at the top prize.
Programs will be available onsite to help spectators identify competitors and horses. A full list of competitions, entry information and details for those interested can be found at rigameadow.com
Whether an experienced equestrian or simply curious about the sport, the Lakeville Open Horse Show offers a chance to enjoy a Hudson Valley tradition that continues to bring the community together.
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