Izzi Greenberg Will Lead Middlesex Coalition for Children

North End Action Team executive director Izzi Greenberg has been named the new executive director of the Middlesex Coalition for Children, an advocacy organization for children in Middlesex County.

“Izzi Greenberg is exactly the right person to continue the Coalition’s invaluable work,” said Willard McRae, chair of the Coalition’s Board of Directors.

Greenberg is stepping down as the executive director of Middletown’s NEAT, which mobilizes residents of a low-income neighborhood for community improvement. Greenberg started at NEAT as a community organizer in 2001, and has been its executive director since 2007.

“This is an exciting new opportunity for me,” Greenberg said. “I look forward to expanding the work I have been doing at NEAT in a wider field and with a focus on kids.” 

Greenberg lives in Middletown with her family and has two children in elementary school.

The Middlesex Coalition for Children’s mission is “to improve the lives of children in Middletown and Middlesex County.”

Founded in 1992, the Coalition is composed of 350 educators, children’s services professionals, parents and activists.  It identifies urgent children’s issues and works through community mobilization, coordination and advocacy to address them.  

The Coalition has been instrumental in developing a wide variety of programs for children in Middlesex County.

Among them:

• The Parent Leadership Training Institute, one of its earliest projects, which from a base in the Middletown school system has trained 300 parents in civic engagement since 1998
  
• The Middletown School Readiness program, which now provides low-cost, high-quality preschool for 250 children each year, supported by an annual $2 million state grant
  
• Early Head Start, a federally-funded early education program for at-risk children from birth to three years, which serves families in six Middlesex County towns
  
• The iCARE program at Bielefield Elementary School, an innovative behavioral health early intervention and prevention program, and Child FIRST, an intervention program for families in crisis who have preschool children       
• The Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program, a partnership with Middlesex United Way, which this year helped over 400 taxpayers.        
• Multiple new and expanded programs to prevent childhood hunger, most recently helping bring mobile food pantries to Middletown and Portland.