TD Banknorth Gives $20,000 to Cromwell Disabilities Center for Awareness Program in Maine Schools

TD Banknorth has donated $20,000 to The Jeremiah Cromwell Disabilities Center to support an innovative program that provides disabilities awareness instruction primarily to elementary school children in Maine.

The grant, provided by TD Banknorth’s charitable giving arm, the TD Banknorth Charitable Foundation, will help the Center toward its goal of reaching 10,000 Maine students during the current school year.

The aim of the program is to foster positive attitudes and sensitivity toward peers and all people with all types of disabilities – learning, behavioral, developmental, and physical. Highly trained instructors go into 3rd through 6th grade classrooms to conduct age-appropriate interactive exercises with children and their teachers that focus on these all-important messages.

An initial grant from TD Banknorth in 2003 funded the start up of the program in the fall of 2004. So far, the Student Disabilities Awareness Program has reached more than 11,000 students in Maine.

“TD Banknorth is pleased to provide continued support to the Cromwell Center for this worthwhile program,” said Julie McQuillan, Public Affairs Manager at TD Banknorth in Maine. “Clearly, educators across Maine see the value of this program, as do we. This kind of instruction and awareness is a good thing for young people in Maine.”

Each training session lasts between 1½ to 2 hours. Through interactive exercises, children learn from themselves and their classmates that persons with any kind of disability simply are different in the same way that every person is unique.

”Children form value judgments about people with differences at an early age. This intolerance can be ‘unlearned,’ but that process must start when children are at an age when they are most impressionable,” said Jamie Kaplan, executive director of the Portland-based non-profit Cromwell Disabilities Center.

Kaplan applauded TD Banknorth’s continued involvement in the program. A number of TD Banknorth employees also volunteer as program instructors.

“TD Banknorth has been there from the beginning with financial support,” he said. “And the involvement of the bank’s extremely talented and dedicated employees has been a huge plus for the program. We can’t thank them enough.”

The Cromwell Center is named after Jeremiah Cromwell, a young boy with disabilities who was institutionalized in the early 1900s in the Maine School for the Feeble-Minded, formerly located in New Gloucester. He died there in 1928 at the age of 16, but no family member retrieved Jeremiah's body for a proper burial. He was interred in a small graveyard next to the school. His grave was marked only by a cylinder of cement with a number stamped on top. The Center is dedicated to the mission that people with all kinds of disabilities will never again experience such profound isolation in life and anonymity at death.

For more information on the Center or the program, visit online at www.cromwellcenter.org.

The TD Banknorth Charitable Foundation is the charitable giving arm of TD Banknorth Inc. The Foundation's mission is to serve the individuals, families and businesses in all the communities where TD Banknorth operates, having made over $14 million in charitable donations since its inception in 2002. The efforts of the Foundation are coordinated locally through TD Banknorth's community relations departments and are focused on the areas of economic empowerment, youth development and community support. More information on the TD Banknorth Charitable Foundation is available at www.TDBanknorth.com.

In Maine, TD Banknorth operates 61 branches and 90 ATMs. A division of TD Banknorth, N.A., TD Banknorth is the state’s largest bank and provides more than 229,000 Maine households with a full line of retail banking products and services.

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