Paving New Ways (Celebrating 170 Years of History)

For 170 years, Cayuga Centers has been paving new ways to serve children and families with no intentions of stopping. One hundred and seventy years of serving has given us many opportunities to introduce innovative programs to communities across the U.S., which perfectly aligns with our rich history that’s been writing itself since 1852.

To celebrate this milestone, we spent time revisiting annual reports, ledgers, and photo albums dating back to the 1800s. Which helped us to learn more details about our rich history. We spent over two months reaching out to past employees - some of which were with the agency for over 30 years - and current employees who have made an impact at the organization and were vital in the creation of some of our prominent programs today, in hopes of gathering their personal views and stories from their time at Cayuga Centers.

Gathering these stories and revisiting physical content from the 1800s was the driving force for how “Paving New Ways” would come together for multi-use across the agency. The stories we gathered lent themselves nicely to 170 Years: Paving New Ways, an eight-chapter history booklet; Tales From the Archive: Paving Our Way Through History, an eight-piece docuseries; Our History, a webpage highlighting our journey from our early beginnings to now with snippets from the history booklet and the docuseries.

Furthermore, to bring awareness to our organization’s commitment to serving our communities, Cayuga Centers celebrated 170 years, raising funds to enhance our programs. At these celebrations, the “Paving New Ways” archival materials were made public and distributed to donors. Internally, “Paving New Ways” has become part of our company culture, and the campaign has been added to our New Hire Orientation Training.