The Stratford Alliance for Innovative Learning, Inc. (SAIL) is a non-profit organization working to enrich and expand both ecological and local programming for our Stratford students. Our hope is to act as a bridge between our community and schools by providing enrichment programs that connect future leaders and hard-working educators to Stratford’s unique local, historical and ecological resources. There is an abundance of those resources right here in our own backyard!
SAIL hopes to give students hands-on access to a rich learning experience by simply utilizing what has been overlooked in our own neighborhoods. Together we can expand our children’s exposure to life around us while cultivating a generation willing to protect and preserve our unique resources in the future. We need support, membership and willing volunteers to make this dream a reality.
What are those resources?
Stratford has a variety of amazing connections to history, culture and rich ecological resources that most students – and many adults – are unaware of such as:
- A unique history founded in 1639 by the Puritans, Stratford is a hundred years older than our Fairfield County neighbors
- The Paugussetts were the first inhabitants of Lordship prior to the Puritans
- Significant role in Revolutionary War history
- Great Meadow Marsh, a diverse and federally protected ecological site
- Long Beach West home to 1/3rd of the state’s endangered Piping Plover population, as well as other nesting seabirds, wildlife and marine life
- Once a hot spot for summer stock, Shakespeare Theater’s stage was graced by actors Paul Newman, Katherine Hepburn, James Earl Jones and many others
- Stratford Point Lighthouse
- Roosevelt Forest
- Major contribution to history of aviation, including Igor Sikorsky’s development of world’s first commercial helicopter in 1939 and production of Corsair during WWII which was vital to the campaign in the Pacific
- Too many more to name!