Naugatuck Valley Project, Inc.,
Waterbury, CT

Started in 1985, the Naugatuck Valley Project (NVP) was and is a multi-issue organization based in congregations, unions and community organizations in the Naugatuck Valley in Connecticut. The Naugatuck Valley Project has a history of coming up with creative responses to difficult, often systemic problems in the region. When posed with the question, What are the alternatives to our sagging economy and scarce jobs market?  NVP responds: Find new creative markets that grow from needs in the community, and see if these initiatives can be made into jobs: Preferably good paying jobs.

Back in the early 80’s there was an exodus of manufacturing jobs from Waterbury, once known as the “Brass Capital of the World”.   Whenever, NVP heard about a plant closing they worked hard to get a meeting with the owners and management in order to discuss alternatives to leaving the community. NVP organized white and blue-collar employees and their communities in three successful employee buyouts of factories threatened with closing, including the Seymour Specialty Wire Company, the largest democratically owned industrial firm in the nation form 1984-1991.

As a result of plant closings in the region, the Naugatuck Valley was left with 160 polluted sites. In 1997, NVP leaders brought federal brownfields money to the Naugatuck Valley to rehab the sites which they had identified up and down the Valley.  This produced an agency called the Brownfields Pilot Program. Leaders are now beginning to investigate whether people can be trained and employed to clean up these sites throughout the Valley.

In 1998, NVP leaders discovered that the remnants of the unraveled brass industry left many small manufacturers looking for highly trainable skilled workers.  Leaping into action Waterbury leaders met with the Waterbury Adult Education Department and found that they could create a “screw machine or widget training program” to funnel unemployed workers to be trained for this industry.  It has since produced over 500 jobs and is a model training program in the United States.   Leaders in 2003 are revisiting that strategy to see if they can put more unemployed workers to work within its member institutions.

NVP’s history offers many examples of seizing upon the assets in a community in order to address the needs. One key to their success has been their ability to get blue collar and white collar workers at the same negotiating table. Their track record of successful interaction with the business community has enabled them to work constructively with local businesses again and again. In addition, their success with creating employee owned businesses provides them with a sense of possibility that new employee-owned companies can be started in the Valley. Below are several more examples of how NVP seeks to turn the needs and assets of their community into good paying jobs.

• NVP leaders uncovered horror stories among the Latino population about the lack of health care. One woman went into the hospital to receive prenatal care and came out with an abortion because health care professionals couldn’t find an interpreter.  Because of this experience the woman feels she never wants to step inside another American hospital. Adequate health services are a major need in the community and local leaders have designed an interpreting service staffed by volunteers from the community. NVP’s current action is to explore creating jobs or a possible employee owned interpreting service for the entire Valley.

• NVP leaders are looking to rehab 21 units of affordable housing in a blighted Waterbury, Connecticut neighborhood.  The housing stock is made up of Colonial and Victorian style houses from the turn of the century that need rehabilitation.  Leaders feel that instead of gutting these structures and throwing out their contents, it would be feasible to recycle or “deconstruct” them and sell their contents on the open market. The exploration of a “deconstruction company” is a possible strategy.

• The Valley’s ethnic diversity brings rich opportunities.  Leaders are exploring an International Food Co-op by bringing in the Industrial Cooperative Association (ICA) to teach them what needs to be done to develop this idea and the ideas above. Hoping to create jobs, a former Caribbean cook wants to start a cooking institute out of his church’s kitchen and market its finished products to supermarkets, concessions, and even restaurants.

Contact point:

Carol Burkhart-Lyons, Interim Director
Naugatuck Valley Project, Inc.,
26 Ludlow Street
Waterbury, CT  06710

Phone: 203-574-2410; Fax: 203-574-3545
E-mail: nvp@highstream.net