Michael and Rich, Focused Together

A Kennedy Collective story about photography, friendship, and what happens when someone sees your potential.

Ask Michael Donahue what he loves, and the answer comes quickly: taking pictures. Trees. Nature. The quiet things most people walk past.

Michael lives in Trumbull with his mom and dad and works in the main cafeteria at Fairfield University, a job he walks into with a smile. But it is what happens after work that has taken him around the world and onto the walls of some of Fairfield County's most competitive exhibitions.

It started with a question

Back in 2008, a Kennedy Collective staff member approached Rich Kunsch with an idea. There was a young man, already a talented artist, who wanted to learn photography. He needed someone to support him in a class at Fairfield University. Rich was a photographer himself. It seemed like a good match.

It turned out to be a great one.

Michael and Rich took photography classes together at Fairfield University and added art classes along the way. When the classes ended, they did not stop. They looked for ways to keep going and found camera clubs in Milford and Bridgeport. The season runs September through May, with meetings twice a month, one for learning and one for competition.

They started in the beginner division. Today they compete at the advanced level. At a recent spring competition, Michael and Rich took first and second place in advanced color and black and white. The judging is blind. The judges come from other clubs, many of them working professionals whose images appear in magazines. They do not know Michael. They only know his work.

Michael Donahue stands alongside a selection of his photography, showcasing a passion he has developed over nearly two decades.

Every year, the walls get a little bigger

Michael and Rich exhibit annually at the Milford Library. This year, both were selected for Images, the Fairfield Museum's juried photography exhibition, where roughly 42 photographs are chosen from more than 400 submissions.

His work does more than hang on walls. Michael has been asked to donate many of his framed photographs to several charities, and he has said yes every time, sending his images out to help causes beyond his own.

Much of Michael's work is travel photography. Italy. France. Ireland. Scotland. Bermuda. His camera club friends joke about taking away his passport, or better yet, coming along. Ask him his favorite and he will name Bermuda, then Ireland.

And when the cameras are put away, there is almost always a cheeseburger involved.

What In-Home Supports really means

Michael's photography did not happen by accident. It happened because of a program built around one idea: that people should be able to live as independently as possible, in their own home and their own community.

The Kennedy Collective's Individualized Home Supports (IHS) program strengthens the abilities people already have, helping them run a household, manage daily tasks, and take part as active members of their families and communities. Supports are shaped around each person. Independent Living Skills Training offers one-to-one assistance in building the skills needed to live independently, no matter the physical limitations, while Companion Support reinforces those skills through community connection and mentorship. Case Management and Service Coordination identify the supports someone needs and turn them into a clear plan. Pre-Vocational Skills Training builds skills tied to employment and job performance, and Transitional Living Services focus on household maintenance, personal finance, and hygiene. Along the way there are the practical things that make a life work: budgeting, travel, grocery shopping and meal preparation, making and keeping medical appointments, and understanding available benefits.

Above all, the program stresses individual choice and participation in the community, whether someone lives with family or is working toward a home of their own.

For Michael, choice meant a camera.

What Rich sees

Rich has held many roles in his years at The Kennedy Collective: behavioral support, job coaching, case management, day program. The IHS Program is where everything came together.

Today Rich is Michael's case manager, and the two connect regularly throughout the month, coordinating supports, working on goals, heading to camera club meetings, and getting out into the community together.

"It is not just doing the fun stuff," Rich says. It is the intentional learning inside the fun. Daily living skills. Socialization. Communication. Art.

Danielle Krikscuin, who manages the IHS program, puts it plainly: Rich has a rare ability to see someone's potential and then build the program that gets them there. What began as a goal has become something bigger. Michael has a community of peers who know him as a photographer, not as someone with a disability.

Rich remembers a quieter Michael when they first met, timid and a little withdrawn. Nearly two decades later, Michael comes home and tells his parents everything he did that day.

This is what support looks like

Thursdays bring the drop-in recreation group, where the activities change week to week and the fun is the point. It is one more place where Michael connects with others, and one more reason the group is something Rich hopes to grow.

That is In-Home Supports at The Kennedy Collective. Not just help getting through the day, but the kind of support that opens a door and then keeps opening more.