About Us

The UN Committee of New Canaan was started in 1952 in response to President Eisenhower’s appeal to local communities to honor the US-UN relationship on the anniversary of the 1945 founding of the UN. We are one of the oldest active grassroots-community UN groups in the country.

With our partner, the New Canaan Library, we put on two lectures per year for our community: the UN Committee Lecture in Spring, and the Anita Houston Lecture in the Fall (to commemorate UN Day). With the generous funding from the New Canaan community we are able to do humanitarian work. We have funded the New Canaan High School Model UN Club, raised over $150K for girls' schools in Afghanistan, $48K for clearing landmines in Cambodia, and over $8K (so far) for humanitarian parole applications for Afghan refugees.