Month: November 2020

AGAWAM — Jean Deliso, CFP has been named a member of the 2020 Chairman’s Council of New York Life. Members of the Chairman’s Council rank in the top 3% of New York Life’s sales force of more than 12,000 licensed agents in sales achievement. She has accomplished this level of achievement for nine consecutive years.

Deliso has been a New York Life agent since 1995 and is associated with New York Life’s Connecticut Valley General Office in Windsor, Conn. She is a member of the Nautilus Group, an exclusive, advanced planning resource for estate-conservation and business-continuation strategies.

She is president and owner of Deliso Financial and Insurance Services, a firm focusing on comprehensive financial strategies that help position clients for a solid financial future. She has worked in the financial field for more than 30 years, her first seven in public accounting and the balance working in the financial-services industry.

Deliso has developed an expertise assisting business owners and individuals protecting and securing their and their family’s future. Her extensive experience has led to a focus in certain fields, such as cash and risk management, investment, retirement, and estate planning. She is fully committed to educating individuals regarding their finances and frequently conducts workshops advocating financial empowerment.

She currently serves on and has held chairman of the board positions at Baystate Health Foundation and the Community Music School of Springfield. She is also a former board member of the YMCA of Greater Springfield and Pioneer Valley Refrigerated Warehouse, a former trustee of the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts, and a former member of the Bay Path University advisory board.

SPRINGFIELD — Overland Lofts announced it is now accepting applications. Springfield’s Business Improvement District is offering a lease-signing incentive toward move-in expenses for tenants who sign a lease in the months of November and December. The Springfield BID will pay $200 toward the first month’s rent. Visit springfielddowntown.com for more information on this exclusive deal.

Overland Lofts is a new apartment development scheduled to open to residents in January 2021. It’s the first new apartment complex in Springfield’s downtown in decades. The apartment building is the result of an historic renovation of the Willy’s Overland Motor Co., the father to the modern-day Jeep. The building and apartment design retain features of the original building, with brick walls and industrial-style, energy-efficient windows, which will let in abundant natural light.

The 76,000-square-foot building will include 60 apartments ranging from lofts to two-bedroom units with state-of-the-art features such as granite kitchens, stainless-steel appliances, and washers and dryers in every unit. Building amenities will include a fitness center, storage units, and a lobby with work/study spaces, a secured package locker, an entertainment and lounge area that will be available for private events, and a common area with comfortable seating for casual gatherings and guests.

Residents will have the option of renting parking spaces within the building or in the secure outdoor lot adjacent to the building. In addition, the construction of an on-property dog park is underway.

CHICOPEE — Lorraine’s Soup Kitchen & Pantry needs help to survive in a year filled with pandemic, unemployment, and families who are trying to make ends meet. The organization has seen a steady increase in visitors, and supplies are running low.

Ruben Reyes, executive director of Lorraine’s Soup Kitchen & Pantry, has seen a lot more people looking for food. “Lately, we’ve seen families who would not normally come through our doors. We’ve noticed a steady increase in families who are looking for meals,” he said, noting that Lorraine’s currently feeds 13% of Chicopee residents annually, or 600 families per month.

Adam Quenneville heard that Lorraine’s needed help and created Lorraine’s Drive to round up food and funds for the soup kitchen and pantry through the end of December. Quenneville is asking local people and businesses to contribute. He will accept food donations at his South Hadley office, and he has pledged to raise $5,000 for Lorraine’s through his own sales of roofing, siding, decks, and roofing services.

“We’ve seen what Lorraine’s has done for our community since 1980, and now they need us,” said Quenneville, who installed a free roof on Lorraine’s building 12 years ago. “I have decided to create a public drive so Lorraine’s gets what it needs to help our families and friends in these troubled times. I will also donate a portion of every sale I make through the end of the year to raise $5,000 for Lorraine’s.”

Quenneville is asking other local businesses to match his $5,000 donation or to contribute what they can to Lorraine’s Drive. “This is our community,” he said. “We need to take care of it.”

Monetary donations can be made on the donations page at lorrainessoupkitchen.com. Non-perishable food donations can be dropped at Lorraine’s Soup Kitchen & Pantry, 170 Pendexter Ave., Chicopee, or Adam Quenneville Roofing & Siding Inc., 160 Old Lyman Road, South Hadley. For more information, or to make a business donation, contact Quenneville at (413) 536-5955 or Reyes at (413) 592-9528 or [email protected].

HOLYOKE — If the “Itsy Bitsy Zoomcast” sounds like something meant for children, that’s not too far from the truth. In fact, the graphic that introduces this new series of short videos is a child’s cartoon sketch of two bespectacled adults, real-life co-hosts Sheila Gould and Liz Charland-Tait.

Gould and Charland-Tait are part of the Early Childhood Education program at Holyoke Community College (HCC) and the co-creators of the online series that also has a much more academic and adult-sounding title: “The More We Get Together: Conversations That Build Bridges in Early Education.”

“We refer to it as the ‘Itsy Bitsy Zoomcast,’” said Gould, whose 9-year daughter, Marianne, drew the picture that leads into each show. “It’s a nod to the Itsy Bitsy Spider, and the episodes are very short — 15-20 minutes, max.”

As the formal name implies, the show is focused generally on early education and more specifically on re-establishing links disrupted by COVID-19, while also furthering development and training for students and professionals already working in the field.

“When the pandemic happened, Liz was really thinking about all the different ways people working in the field need to stay connected and how much everyone benefits from helping each other,” said Gould, coordinator of HCC’s Early Education program. “We came up with the idea for a Zoomcast to highlight issues important to the early-childhood field in Western Massachusetts that would also help our student teachers connect with the professional side of the field they’re entering.”

A Zoomcast is like a podcast, but in a video format. It’s recorded over Zoom, the video-chat application that has become so popular during the pandemic for people working at home.

Gould and Charland-Tait began working on the Itsy Bitsy Zoomcast at the beginning of the fall semester. The project is sponsored by both HCC and the Western Massachusetts Professional Development Center, which is based at HCC and funded through a Strong Start Training and Technical Assistance Grant the college received from the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care.

Each of seven planned episodes focuses on a different topic and features interviews with professionals from the early education field. Pairs of students from Gould’s “Student Teaching” class serve as guest hosts. Gould and Charland-Tait help moderate.

“We’re hoping the Zoomcast will help create common ground between the students and the employers who will ultimately hire them,” said Charland-Tait, lead coach for the Western Massachusetts Professional Development Center.

The first three episodes debuted in October on HCC’s Facebook page and are archived on the college’s YouTube channel, youtube.com/holyokecc. Future segments will be released over the next two months.

The first show, “Intro to the Wild West,” served as a prologue to the series and featured an interview with Kimm Quinlan, HCC’s director of Early Childhood Grant Initiatives. The second, “Running a Center – Then and Now: Staying Positive During a Pandemic,” welcomed Mariah Levine, director of Y Kids Pre-school at the Greater Holyoke YMCA, and Felicita Lopez, owner of New Horizons Family Childcare in Holyoke.

The remaining episodes will focus on themes such as perceptions of quality, overcoming barriers for parents who need childcare, the power of play, and embracing new COVID-19 guidelines. The last show will feature Samantha Aigner-Treworgy, commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care. That episode will be broadcast on Dec. 2 with a Facebook watch party scheduled for 7 p.m.

“The show is gaining a lot of traction,” Gould said. “Having the commissioner on is a really big deal for our field and a huge deal for us.”

Based on the response so far, Gould and Charland-Tait are already thinking about a second season of the Itsy Bitsy Zoomcast during the spring 2021 semester.

“The pandemic has put such a spotlight on early-childhood education as people realize how much they depend on childcare,” Gould said. “The work is so important, and all the attention really presents an amazing opportunity to share and grow, so we’re thrilled to come up with this idea, and we hope it continues.”