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Good Night Hartford

Laurie Perez

March 11, 2010

A great part of my job as a television reporter is that I'm often invited to help out hosting various fundraisers - it's my pleasure, it's always a blast, and I love to do it. Unfortunately, I don't always get to see the end result. But recently at a Hartford school I did. I saw a student carrying a tote bag from "project night night" - a charity I've emceed parties for over the past few years.

I knew what that bag meant.

For the second year in a row a small group of Hartford friends who share a birthday have celebrated by supporting "project night night,'' a children's charity dedicated to giving homeless kids some comfort. The project's website says there are now more homeless children in the U.S. than at any other time since the Great Depression. The project supplies kids with canvas tote bags -- each with a blanket, a book, and a stuffed animal -- the nighttime comforts of home for those without one.

State Rep, Kelvin Roldán, his brother Juan Roldán, City Clerk John Bazzano, Chairman of the School Building Committee John Motley, and Rich Harris, press aide to the governor, make up the "September 11 Group.''

They're a bunch of guys who share the eleventh as their birth date and who after 2001 decided to re-dedicate the day to something even greater than a personal celebration. They now host a very well-attended birthday party--fundraiser every September at Costa del Sol Restaurant in Hartford. It's so popular that in two years they've collected enough for almost 500 tote bags and Hartford Public Schools have delivered 140 of them to homeless kids in the city.

The boy I saw carrying the bag is one of those homeless kids. I hope it will help him sleep well tonight.