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President's Letter
February 2010
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Happy New Year to
everyone! This is my first president’s letter and I have to admit it’s a
bit daunting. Why? Because I’m following in the footsteps of a great
friend who tirelessly gave so much to our organization, how can I
measure up? Thanks Shila for all your hard work and dedication to
CAFFA. But have no fear fellow members, Shila isn’t getting away.
She’s not even leaving the board. Shila will be in a new role
coordinating our educational events and our conference. It’s a comfort
to me and everyone on the board that we have her expertise, tenacity and
organizational skills helping out. I’d also like to welcome a new
board member, Anita Snow. Anita, her husband, Dwight and son, Owen live
on the south side of Chicago. Anita brings a vast wealth of experience
to her new board position as Social Chair. Anita has 15 years
experience in event planning including the Chicago Marathon and clients
like Nike. She will be a real asset to our CAFFA board.
In case you
are wondering who I am, here are some cliff notes on myself and my
family. I have been married to a wonderful man, Chris, for 17 years.
Eight years ago we began our adoption journey. We have two sons, Jet
(7) and Charlie (6). Both boys were born in South Korea and joined our
family in the first six months of their lives. One of our sons has some
special needs and an IEP. This school year we have a high school
foreign exchange student living with us from Korea. She’s really
evolved into our third child. I have a business background and worked
for three large consumer product companies in marketing and sales. Now I
stay at home and volunteer with different organizations (adoption and
school related) in Chicago land. Our family has lived in La Grange
going on five years, moving here from Minneapolis. I was very active in
adoption organizations in Minneapolis and was thrilled to find CAFFA
three years ago. I’ve held previous positions on the board as secretary
and social chair. In my "off" hours from shuttling kids, homework and
housework, I’m an avid knitter, reader and currently ranked a brown belt
in Tae Kwon Do. Whew, enough about me, I can’t wait to meet you.
As
part of your New Year, did you set any resolutions? I did too and yes,
I’ve broken the silly ones that pertain to food. This month your
board has been busy setting annual goals and resolutions too. Late
last year we surveyed you, the members, on CAFFA programs, events and
services. Thank you to everyone who took the time out of their busy
schedules to respond. Your responses guided our goals for the upcoming
year and opened our eyes to what’s working and what’s not. Some
results will be shared in another article within this newsletter. I’d
like to share with you the 2010 goals that resulted from your survey
feedback. We identified five things that we’d like to accomplish in
2010. First we agreed to target doing four social events this year, one
per quarter. We’ve agreed up on a date for our first event, March 7,
2010 and now are working on finding a venue. More information will be
coming shortly. At least one of our events will be targeted at our
pre-adopt families and one of our events will be a cultural event. Both
of these event types are based directly from survey feedback. Second,
there will be two educational events this year. We are tossing around
the idea of a round table discussion event. Stay tuned! Thirdly,
we’d like to further deepen and strengthen our relationships with
agencies. We need the help of agencies to get the word out about
CAFFA. Our fourth goal is to establish a philanthropy arm to our
organization by finding an adoption-related charity that CAFFA can
support in 2010. As we formalize this more, information will be
forthcoming. Fifth, we would like to provide more education on foster
care adoptions via newsletter, conference and educational events. As
foster care adoptions are increasing, we need to educate and help our
membership with this type of adoption.
We hope you are as
excited as the board is about the upcoming year and all that is being
planned. We could really use your help in making CAFFA stronger through
membership growth. Please forward or share this newsletter with
another adoptive family. Invite them to join CAFFA or attend one of our
events. As always, please check out the website regularly for updates
on events, adoption legislation, fundraising and more. Speaking of
fundraising, is one of your New Year resolutions organizing and cleaning
out your closets? If it is, please remember CAFFA as you are cleaning
out your closets this spring. Please put stuff aside for CAFFA because
on May 7 & 8, CAFFA will be holding its annual garage sale
fundraiser. It’s our largest fundraising event and helps fund many of
our social events. Remember, one man’s junk is another man’s treasure.
Once again, thank you members for your support, feedback and
participation in this wonderful organization.
Warmly,
Jan
Reagan
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