Help Support CRIS

To the Editor:

When you pick up the newspaper today to check last night’s sports scores, check the stocks, or catch up on the latest news, stop and think how you would get all that information if you did not have your sight, or had a disability preventing you from turning the pages of the paper. The answer is CRIS –– The Connecticut Radio Information System.

The blind and disabled community depends on the free reading service that CRIS Radio provides. They are able to keep up with news and information through its broadcast of newspapers and magazines on a special radio, cable radio, and touch-tone telephone. Our little known statewide non-profit organization, celebrating 25 years of service, faced financial demise at the end of its fiscal year in June if a gap of $50,000 could not be filled.

My thanks go to the numerous media organizations who helped raised the public’s awareness and to people who responded to the articles and broadcasts.

We appreciate Governor John G. Rowland, Lt Governor M. Jodi Rell, and OPM Secretary Marc Ryan for their recognition and support of our service to the community, and coming to our aid to ensure we continue broadcasting to the blind and disabled throughout Connecticut

This $50,000 supplemental grant is a temporary fix to what is a process of our ongoing effort to raise funds for CRIS and awareness of the reading service it provides. Our work is not over because our $242,000 budget is mostly funded by charitable grants from local and statewide foundations, businesses that underwrite our programs and sponsor our fundraising events, civic organizations who make donations, and individuals who contribute to our annual appeal.

This country prides itself on freedom of speech and we work to enable blind and disabled citizens to have access to that speech. We will proceed, with CRIS’s mission of being Connecticut’s Talking Newsstand for the Blind and Print Handicapped, as we look towards the support of the business community.

Thank you to everyone who has supported us and will continue to support us in our future.

Sincerely,

Andrea A. Pasquale

Executive Director

CRIS Radio

184 Windsor Avenue, Suite C, Windsor                   October 7, 2003