Connie Milstein

Archive for the ‘Connie Milstein’ Category

In addition to their delicious baked goods and lovely ambiance, Connie’s Bakery and General Store, owned by Connie Milstein, has a giving vehicle called Foundation Sweet Success.  Through this, they donate 100% of their after-tax profits to charitable organizations each year.  They target six non-profit organizations and divide their funds equally among them each year.

One of these organizations is called Career Closet.  This group provides free office clothes and other services through the Briarcliff Congregational Church in Briarcliff Manor.  Career Closet clients have the opportunity to select four outfits for the spring and summer season, and then to return for another four outfits for the fall and winter season.  Recipients are those who are recommended by a job-training or counseling program. They can shop by appointment on Saturday from 9:30 to noon.

Volunteers help the recipients select clothing at Career Closet.  At the same time, they offer job interviewing sessions at the participants homes or at transitional housing shelters.

Connie’s Bakery and General Store has established a giving vehicle called Foundation Sweet Success.  100% of after-tax profits from Connie’s Bakery and General Store support charitable work.  Each year, they select six non-profit organizations to designate as the recipients of their charitable funds.

The Breadwinners Foundation is one of these organizations that receive donations from Connie’s Bakery and General Store, owned by Connie Milstein.  This non-profit organization offers short term financial assistance and resource information to families who are dealing with economic hardship after the tragic loss of the primary breadwinner.  For nine years now, The Breadwinners Foundation has been offering financial support including medical expenses, mortgage payments, funeral costs and more.

The Breadwinners Foundation was started by Keith J. Ahlers when his brother died suddenly, leaving his family without sufficient resources.  The organization is funded entirely by contributions from community members and organizations, such as Connie’s Bakery and General Store.

Refugees International is an organization which fights for the protection of people who have been displaced, offers them assistance, and advocates and promotes for the resolution of whatever conflicts were the initial cause of the displacement. Connie Milstein is an Emeritus Director for Refugees International. As such she is dedicated to respond the challenges caused by international crisis and conflicts, such as the following:

• If a refugee crisis is ignored or not dealt with properly this situation can have worldwide destabilizing effect. At the moment there are almost 42 million people around the globe with refugee status. An additional 12 million live in limbo as stateless without any citizenship rights. These people are among the world’s most vulnerable, each one with a heartbreaking personal story of loss, suffering and survival to tell.

• A conflict can spread across borders if it is not dealt with an immediate, appropriate way, threatening stability. Refugees International responds quickly with food, medicine and education. They look for ways to get the refugees home. Peacekeepers offer protection to the refugees and stateless individuals are helped to receive a useful legal status. Refugees International arose in 1979 as a grass roots citizen’s movement to offer assistance and protection to the refugees of Indochina. Today they have expanded to become the world’s premier organization which advocates for refugees and provokes appropriate action form world leaders to find solutions to global conflicts which cause refugees to flee. Refugees International is completely independent, not accepting money from governments or the United Nations, allowing the organization to maintain independence and non-partiality.

Connie Milstein represented her family at the ceremony celebrating the opening of the state-of-art Vivian and Seymour Milstein Family Heart Center. As part of the already medically outstanding New York Presbyterian Hospital, the latest cardiac facility should prove to take cardiac care to new levels of excellence.

One of the cutting-edge high-tech machines the Milstein Center will have at its service is the Zeego 3-Dimensional Circular X-ray device. The Zeego, of which the Milstein Center will have three of the country’s eleven in total, is capable of giving doctors an unprecedented view of the internal structure and functioning of their patients with none of the invasiveness of previous procedures to obtain similar information.

“The Milstein Heart Center will allow New York-Presbyterian to continue on its path of advancing new treatments, a road that saw this Hospital perform the first successful pediatric heart transplant operation, the country’s first robotically assisted open-heart procedure to be completed with a totally closed chest, and the country’s first robotically assisted, totally endoscopic coronary artery bypass surgery, along with many other breakthroughs in cardiovascular research and patient care,” says Dr. Craig R. Smith, surgeon-in-chief at the Vivian and Seymour Milstein Family Heart Center.

The Milstein Family Heart Center, with the help of Connie Milstein, will lead the country into the future of excellent health care for healthier, more productive lives.

The Vivian and Seymour Milstein Family Heart Center, which celebrated its opening this past February 1st, will continue the tradition of excellence which the New York Presbyterian/Columbia Medical Center is world renown for. Rated as one of the ten best hospitals in the country by “U.S. News and World Report” and the best in New York, NY Presbyterian will add three of only eleven cutting-edge Zeego 3-D circular X-ray machines found in the United States to its already excellent inventory of equipment.  These machines will offer improved, non-invasive evaluation, diagnosis and treatment of heart problems and other related ailments.

Connie Milstein represented the Milstein Family at the inaugural ceremony held on January 20th. Her family donated $50 million of the $260 million spent to create and appoint this amazing new facility.

Dr. Herbert Pardes, the CEO and president of the New York Presbyterian Hospital explained at the opening ceremony the importance of and hope for the new Milstein Family Heart Center:

“As we open the doors to the Vivian and Seymour Milstein Family Heart Center, we look at the future of heart care, with advanced inpatient and outpatient care, including new minimally invasive treatment options, available together under one roof. This building honors the longstanding vision and support of the Vivian and Seymour Milstein family and signals a unique hospital setting where heart patients have access to the very best care, delivered with compassion in a comfortable and family-friendly environment.”

Military families were certainly happy recently, as they indulged in the 400 tins of brownies that were delivered to Fort Drum in time for Christmas!  Connie Milstein, a Blue Star Families Board Member, and her bakery teamed up to create a great Christmas surprise for the newly reunited families at Fort Drum.  Her bakery donated 400 tins of brownies to the families at Fort Drum, so that they would enjoy this delicacy to help celebrate their Christmas redeployment.

Carmen Blackmore, the Fort Drum interim chapter director explained that the soldiers and their families “were impressed by Connie’s & Blue Star Families support and even more impressed how good the brownies were.”

Hear Susan Axelrod, founder of CURE, discuss the organization and the viewing of the 60 Minutes segment about the organization. Join together with so many others, including CURE board members such as Connie Milstein, to learn more about this organization that raises awareness of, and money for, epilepsy research.

Among her many other socially-responsible activities, Connie Milstein owns Connie’s Bakery & General Store in downtown Mt. Kisco, New York.  What makes this business venture so unique is that 100% of Connie’s net profits are donated to charitable causes.

In addition to the financial contributions that the store makes, it also offers a myriad of other benefits for local residence.  Certainly, it provides employment for people in the neighborhood.  In addition, Connie’s employees take part in a unique one-year, full-time baking apprenticeship program.  They are trained for the entire year by Simeon Manber, the Executive Pastry Chef and graduate of the Culinary Institute of America.

At the end of their one-year apprenticeship, Connie’s Bakery & General Store helps them to move into permanent positions in the food service industry.  They then get ready to recruit and train another batch of apprentices!

In late November, 2009 the Humpty Dumpty Institute helped to relieve some of the suffering of the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) of Sri Lanka. Connie Milstein, who is chairwoman of the board of directors of the HDI and is also a co-founder, was pleased to note that over $300,000 worth of humanitarian aid was distributed, consisting of, supplies for schools, orphanages and hygienic kits.

The funding for this aid was generously supplied by LDS Charities in the wake of the recent violent conflicts in Sri Lanka. The variety of supplies distributed included 1,855 hygiene kits to the women’s detention camp where about 2,000 IDPs are located. On the same day, November 25th, school kits and orphanage kits were distributed at another camp.
The leading role in which Connie Milstein played in the betterment if the IDPs in Sri Lanka speaks volumes about her caring and concern for the many people in need around the world.

Connie Milstein, along with the other co-founders of the Humpty Dumpty Institute is interested in creating innovative partnerships between the public and private sectors in order to solve some of the world’s more daunting problems. Using unique and creative programming, HDI is now concerned with improving communications between the United States Congress and the United Nations.  Some of the more specific tasks the HDI is striving to accomplish are removal of mines from vast areas around the world to free up the land for agriculture and other uses and to keep civilians safe; and reducing and/or eliminating hunger domestically and internationally.