NORWICH – For years, the Chenango County United Way (CUW) has been there to assist a myriad of community members in a variety of ways that are directly attributable to meeting health, education and income needs.

CUW's annual Day of Caring has historically been a day long event that has proven beneficial to hundreds of community partners throughout the years, as United Way board members and volunteers travel throughout the county and lend a helping hand.

The event has always served as a great opportunity for volunteers to give back, create an impact and gain overall knowledge of many of the county's organizations. While the overall philanthropic mission remains much the same at the county's leading nonprofit, adjustments have been made in the overall impact to communities.

In addition to moving the event date from September to August, organizers Elizabeth Monaco and Victoria Mitchell explained that the Day of Caring is switching gears to address an unmet need in the community by announcing the first ever Hygiene Collection annual Day of Caring event.

“Many of our community partners and local businesses have community impact teams that are out doing projects similar to what we once identified as unmet needs in the community, and as a result there are simply not as many projects available for the United Way to organize for our volunteers,” said Monaco, “which is a good obstacle to face.”

Monaco and Mitchell also explained that in order to achieve the most beneficial community impact, the CUW seized the opportunity to go back to the drawing board and re-evaluate how the Day of Caring could be altered to do just that.

“We are shifting gears and implementing a massive county-wide hygiene collection for 2014,” said Mitchell. “We've done hygiene collections in the past, but by incorporating it into the Day of Caring campaign allows us to do it on a much larger scale.”