Founded by two Yale University students 50 years ago, New Haven nonprofit Marrakech was created to help people with disabilities achieve goals. Starting with children, the organization offers support to individuals in the foster care system, students who want to go to vocational school or college and internship opportunities, and adults seeking employment.

A new wave of Connecticut residents became eligible for COVID-19 vaccines Friday morning. Predictably, not everyone could secure an appointment right away, but state officials said they hope accessibility will improve in the coming weeks with bigger shipments of vaccine doses and more vaccinators.

Insurance giant Chubb has made an unsolicited $23.24 billion offer to acquire locally based The Hartford Financial Services Group. To mull over what will and what could happen here, insurance industry expert Frederick McKinney of Quinnipiac visited with All Things Considered .

Connecticut lawmakers passed a bill two years ago that gradually increases the state minimum wage to levels that will peak in 2023 at $15 per hour. At first glance, that seems like a win for working people. But Lauren Ruth, research and policy director with Connecticut Voices for Children, has co-authored a report that says with the state taking away key benefits at the same time, the minimum wage hike represents only a partial win for working people.

When singer Niu Raza wrote the song “Madagascar,” she wanted to capture the feeling of home through her lyrics and sound. In an interview with NEXT , Raza said she brought in traditional Malagasy singing from her home country of Madagascar and blended it with the influences of pop music and Afrobeat. “Madagascar” is featured on her first full-length album “Mm-hmm,” which was released earlier this year. Raza said it took her years to figure out how to blend different musical traditions in “Mm-hmm

This is a good time of year to make your wish list of new perennial flowers for your garden. I like to read variety trials from public gardens located in similar growing zones to get ideas. One recent trail of echinacea varieties from the Mt. Cuba Center in Wilmington, Delaware caught my eye.

April 1 marks one year since Gov. Ned Lamont announced the formation of the Connecticut COVID-19 Charity Connection, otherwise known as 4-CT . It was billed as an effort to fill in the gaps for those in need after charitable donations decreased due to our pandemic-ravaged economy. The announcement came this week that 4-CT Chief Executive Officer Ted Yang was stepping down. He joined All Things Considered to talk about why now was the right time to leave and about his successor, Catalina Samper

Chris Comfort says that at the start of the pandemic, Lawrence and Memorial Hospital in New London didn’t see a lot of COVID-19 patients. But he and other nurses on the medical-surgical unit kept their eyes on the scene unfolding at Greenwich Hospital at the other end of the state.

Volunteers slowly filed into the main lobby of Fair Haven Community Health Center on Grand Avenue in New Haven. They checked in at the door and then moved along to different stations for supplies. In this case, that would be clipboards, bags of new surgical masks, hand sanitizer and T-shirts that say Vaccinate Fair Haven or Vacunate Fair Haven.

Teachers across Connecticut have started to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. And while vaccination brings a sense of hope, it doesn’t erase the traumas they and their students have experienced over the last year of teaching -- a time when many educators had to reinvent what it meant to be in school.