Big Brothers Big Sisters of Mordern-Winkler

President’s Report

Annual General Meeting – June 8, 2010

Big Brothers Big Sisters of Morden/Winkler

This past year has been a success for our agency. We’ve managed to come through fiscally in solid shape and taken what started as a bleak outlook and managed the agency with a much tighter belt than we’ve ever done before and increased our revenues to bring us from a projected deficit larger than ever in our history to actually operating in the black. This is a powerful transition and one that will do nothing but enable us to further help children in greater ways. All this and we navigated the sometimes tricky water of a full agency accreditation audit and have passed this with full approval on all levels. Laura deserves the most profound of accolades for spearheading these things. We’re truly blessed as an agency to have her working with us and appreciate her steadiness deeply. While last year was one of more board involvement than we’ve typically had to give – this year was one where we were confident enough to let her often stand on her own. She’s done a great, great job.

It was also a year of some change as well. Ashleigh joined our team last year and did a spectacular job while she was with us. We’ll miss her energy and professionalism but she has moved on to other opportunities and we wish her the best in her future. To replace her we’ve had Kevin join the team and we want to extend a very real welcome out to Kevin and hope that he continues to work with us at Big Brothers for years to come. He’s fit in well and has reportedly done an excellent job at transitioning into his new roll.

We’ve still got significant challenges ahead. One of our main goals is to bring our financial position to a place where there is less annual stress to achieve certain fiscal levels and move into a place where we have a more steady income. We are exploring a number of initiatives to do this. Moving forward we’ve got a very real need for an increase in the volunteer base. Male mentors top this list for sure as we’ve still got a significant waiting list of boys who are not being serviced. This will never be acceptable. One of our challenges right now is in obtaining volunteers for the periodic fundraising or agency initiatives. We do need Bigs but we also need a base of people who can be contacted who will be willing to occasionally help out in singular ways. The needs are great and we very much need all of your help. Please spread the word and help us make these connections.

In addition to this we’re actively recruiting a number of new board members as we’re about to say goodbye to several of our long standing members who have served for years. We have to say goodbye to Myrna Hildebrand and Betty Unrau as they’ve served their terms in office and must move on for now to board work with our agency. Lorraine Gerbrandt will also be timing out in March of this coming year. Each of these ladies has served with their hearts, money and sweat for years and also deserve the deepest thanks and accolades we can give. Your involvement has made a difference in the lives of children.

This coming year will be a successful and a year of growth. I believe we’ll serve more children than ever before and continue in a proactive way to develop as an agency to serve in even greater ways.

Jeremy D. Ward - President

ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING / JUNE 8, 2010

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR’S REPORT

It is hard to believe it has almost been a year and a half since I started at BBBSMW. It has gone fast and lots of things have changed and we have accomplished a lot.

CASEWORK

Traditional match numbers continue to remain very steady. We loose a few and gain a few and that is how it seems to go over the course of the year. We saw 6 closures over the year and 7 new matches made for an increase of 1 over all. We had one ISM match move from ISM to Traditional only to close a short time later. Currently we have 4 girls on the waiting list and 6 boys.

The In-School Mentoring Program saw a huge turn around this year. We had a total of 10 matches last school year with 9 of those continuing on this year. With other things happening in the agency there was not time to do any real recruiting so we counted on some newspaper publicity and asking everyone we knew if they could help. To those 9 ISM’s returning from the previous year we added 7 other matches. The Teen ISM program had 5 matches at the end of last year all of whom were in grade 12 so they left at the end of the year. We attended assemblies at both GVE and MCI and held orientation sessions at both schools as well. We had a great turn out at both schools. We have 10 TISM’s in Morden and 5 in Winkler. So that makes for 17 TISM and ISM in Morden and 14 in Winkler. Our schools were very happy to be able to help that many kids.

There is an interesting trend in both the Traditional and ISM program and that is very little interest from men. Just for interest sake; out of our 16 ISM matches between Morden and Winkler only 6 are male. 8 of the 10 TISM matches in Morden are matched with boys and only one of the mentors is male. Of 42 inquiries we have had in the past year only 7 have been from men. The need for men is great.

Match Highlights: Traditional Matches

Big Brother Wayne Forster and Little Brother Nathan will have been matched for 7 years in September
Big Sister Corinna Siemens and Little Sister Tina have been matched for just over 6 years. Tina will be graduating and aging out at the end of June. We at the agency want to say congratulations and way to go to Tina!
Big Brother Peter Loewen and Little Brother Colin have been matched for 5 years
Big Brother Brad Funk and Little Brother Riley have been matched for almost 5 years and Brad has been involved with the agency for about 12 years
Big Brother Jake Hildebrand and Little Brother Wesley have been matched for just over 4 years
Big Sister Allison Sparling and Little Sister Rosie have also been matched for just over 4 years
Big Brother Michael Grenier has been matched with Little Brother Kyle for 3 years. Michael has been a part of the agency for 10 years.
Little Brother Brady moved out of the area so Big Brother Curt Reimer has closed his match. Brady and Curt had been matched for about 3 ½ years. Curt has been involved with the agency for 24 years. Curt has not decided if he will be matched again.

Match Highlights: In-School Mentoring

Irene Letkeman and Brad Neduzak are in their 8^th year as mentors with the ISM program.
Marilyn Martens is in her 6^th year as mentor
Rod Powell and Sharon Olafson are in their 5^th year
Rita Heinrichs and Margie Toews are in their 4^th year
We went from having no matches at ParklandSchool last year to having 6 matches there this year.

PROGRAMMING

A group of Bigs and Littles went to two Goldeyes games last summer.

There was a Pool party at the Days Inn in June and a Scavenger hunt in August.

There were 2 children in our programs who took advantage of our camp sponsorship program.

2 girls from Morden and 2 girls from Winkler were referred through our agency to attend a Tim Hortons Camp. They had an exciting 10 days at Camp in St. George, Ontario. Tim Horton’s treats the kids to a free lunch on CampDay. They also provide each child with a gift backpack full of things to take to camp.

Families of children in our program also appreciate the help we give them towards the cost of passes to the Winkler Aquatic Centre. This helps to keep the kids busy over the summer.

The ever popular Christmas Party was held at St. Paul’s UnitedChurch in Morden in December. We had a great turn out that night, all but 2 Bigs and 2 (waiting list) Littles were in attendance. Local businesses allow this to happen each year through their generous donation of all of the food for the party. Santa attended and had a gift for all the agency children. Small gifts of recognition were presented to our volunteers and Board members. Winkler Bible Camp had increased the cost of renting their facility and all the church asked for was a small donation.

We did not have anyone to oversee our gym nights this year so we held two games nights over the winter. Everyone who attended had lots of fun.

We had a couple of coffee nights for the Bigs over the winter as well. This was started so new Bigs and seasoned Bigs could get together and talk about how things were going. It also gave us a chance to find out some things like how our Bigs want to be recognized.

We helped sell 50/50 tickets at a Winkler Flyers game in January. Big Sister Allison sang O Canada and The Flyers donated $340 to the agency.

In January we helped to make a dream come true for one of our Littles. Little Brother Nathan had to go to see some specialists in Edmonton because of his eyes. He was losing his vision. I contacted the Edmonton Oilers about getting Nathan and his mom to an Oilers game while they were there. Nathan is a huge Oilers and Dustin Penner fan. The Oilers told me they would make sure that Nathan and his mom got to see a game. They got more than just seeing a game. They were taken to a practice where afterwards they got to meet Dustin and the Oiler’s goalie. They signed a stick for Nathan. They toured Rexall Place. They were picked up from their hotel in a limo to be taken to the game. They presented Nathan with a signed Oilers jersey and a bag full of goodies for Nathan’s brothers and sisters back home. They had club seats for the game and were introduced and shown on the jumbotron. It was an experience that he will never forget. Nathan has since been declared legally blind.

Some of our Bigs and Littles and Parents attended a Manitoba Moose hockey game in February.

The bowling party, held the night before Bowl for Kids Sake, was well attended, about 40 people. Bigs, Littles, and some parents, had a great time, and prizes were awarded to Littles who made the effort to collect pledges. We restructured the way we gave out prizes this year so more kids got prizes. They did a great job this year and raised over $1900. I think that is a record.

ADMINISTRATION

The Agency hired Ashley Wiebe to replace Ellie Reimer who retired in June. Ashley was a great addition and she not only took care of the Traditional program but also took over the ISM co-ordinator position. Unfortunately Ashley found full time employment elsewhere in March. We then hired Kevin Minnett. Kevin is still learning all the ins and outs but is working out great.

The Agency underwent an Accreditation process this past year. We sent all kinds of paperwork to National in April. In June an Accreditor visited the Agency for two days. They spent much time going through files and talking to staff, volunteers, parents, board members and funders. Their report was sent to National and then we were informed what we were compliant in and what needed work. So we spent the next few months working on all those things that needed work. I am happy to report that we passed our Accreditation in March. 4 more years until the next one.

BBBS of Canada was informed last winter that our online case management system (HOMES) would be going out of business. BBBSC has been working hard at trying to find a replacement for the HOMES system. We will still have use of the HOMES system until next March but after that we will probably have to go back to the dark ages and just type everything up in Word and then print it out to file. It remains to be seen what BBBSC will replace the HOMES system with but I am thinking it will take them a long time to get it rolled out.

I was asked soon after I started with BBBSMW if I would consider chairing the RHA Central Healthy Communities Conference for 2010 in Morden. Mentoring was the theme and we held a very successful conference on April 23^rd. We had a 175 people attend and most comments were very favourable. It took a year worth of planning but it was worth it. BBBS got a lot of publicity out of that conference. We have a small pot of money left over to continue to support mentoring programs in Morden. A small committee will work together to see what we will do with those funds.

Last fall the Morden and District United Way agreed to allow us to use their office space at 144 Nelson Street 2 days a week. This was to help us increase visibility in Morden.

We participated in the Morden and District United Way Day of Caring. We submitted a project which was the cleaning up and refurbishing our ISM activity bins. Three volunteers were assigned to me to help with this project. We also had a group of volunteers help another organization with cleaning up the lake path.

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

I attended National Conference at the end of June last year. I went out a day early and attended the new E.D. training and then attended 3 more days of workshops. I also represented the Agency at the BBBSC national AGM. It was a great experience, learned lots, met lots of great people but I found 4 days to be a little overwhelming. We did not have any Regional Conferences last year.

With hiring 2 new Caseworkers there was a considerable amount of staff time put in to training.

I attended a workshop on Engaging New Canadians: How to Recruit and Support Newcomer Immigrant Volunteers.

Kelly Wieler and I attended a couple of different Charity Information sessions mostly to do with tax and receipting.

I attended a half day workshop on Effective Community Fundraising

Both Ashley and I attended the Healthy Child Manitoba Mentoring workshop in November. We had a Manitoba staff meeting afterwards where we met with Karen Shaver, VP of Client Services for BBBSC.

BBBSC has started holding webinars to help train so I took advantage of webinars on Wii Bowling, Donor Pro, HOMES and Giver’s Circle.

FUNDRAISING/GRANTS/DONATIONS

Ongoing support through grants was received once again from:

Family Service and Consumer Affairs
Healthy ChildMB.
Morden and District United Way. Morden United Way also gave us an extra grant part way thought the year
Winkler and District United Way

Bowl for Kids continues to be our most effective ongoing fundraising activity. This year we surpassed our goal of $20,000. The event rose just over $21,000. Our goal for next year is $23,000. It has never been more than the $20,000.

The annual Golf for Kids’ Sake Tournament brought in about $4000.

We also held a sausage supper at the Harvest Festival that raised about $1600.

We were the recipient of two Bingos through the Manitoba Community Services Council. Those brought in $6000.

We had several smaller donations from Morden Lions Club, the Morden Elks Club and the Morden Thrift shop to help refurbish the ISM activity bins.

General Donations over the past year were:

$2,142 – Tim Hortons Smile Cookie Campaign
$1,000 – CIBC Employees as Ambassadors Program
$1000 - Winkler Police Bike Auction
$1000 – Winkler Canadian Tire store, fundraising BBQ and donation.

Financial sustainability continues to be a huge issue. Even thought we ended the year in the black continued efforts need to be made to ensure financial stability. We need people to sit on a Finance/ Fundraising Committee as well as people who are willing to help volunteer at events. Let us know if you can help.

PUBLIC RELATIONS

We have not done too much specifically on PR however every event we do brings us much needed coverage. We have tried to have a story on each of our programs in the paper this year. Every larger donation reaps us at least a picture in the paper and a news story on the radio.

We had some free advertising in the Red River College Winter/Spring program guide. When we were at the Winkler Flyers game, they aired a few little “commercials” for us during the game.

We held our first ever Bowl for Kids’ Sake kick off breakfast for all those who sponsored or had a team in last years event. 35 people showed up and I think that helped make a difference in us surpassing our goal this year.

Nathan’s trip to Edmonton brought us a great story in the Morden Times.

Kevin is very computer savvy so he is helping keep the website and our Facebook page current and looking good. If you are not already a friend on Facebook make sure and add us.

Laura Matychuk

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	President’s Report Annual General Meeting – June 8, 2010 Big Brothers Big Sisters of Morden/Winkler This past year has been a success for our agency. We’ve managed to come through fiscally in solid shape and taken what started as a bleak outlook and managed the agency with a much tighter belt than we’ve ever done before and increased our revenues to bring us from a projected deficit larger than ever in our history to actually operating in the black. This is a powerful transition and one that will do nothing but enable us to further help children in greater ways. All this and we navigated the sometimes tricky water of a full agency accreditation audit and have passed this with full approval on all levels. Laura deserves the most profound of accolades for spearheading these things. We’re truly blessed as an agency to have her working with us and appreciate her steadiness deeply. While last year was one of more board involvement than we’ve typically had to give – this year was one where we were confident enough to let her often stand on her own. She’s done a great, great job. It was also a year of some change as well. Ashleigh joined our team last year and did a spectacular job while she was with us. We’ll miss her energy and professionalism but she has moved on to other opportunities and we wish her the best in her future. To replace her we’ve had Kevin join the team and we want to extend a very real welcome out to Kevin and hope that he continues to work with us at Big Brothers for years to come. He’s fit in well and has reportedly done an excellent job at transitioning into his new roll. We’ve still got significant challenges ahead. One of our main goals is to bring our financial position to a place where there is less annual stress to achieve certain fiscal levels and move into a place where we have a more steady income. We are exploring a number of initiatives to do this. Moving forward we’ve got a very real need for an increase in the volunteer base. Male mentors top this list for sure as we’ve still got a significant waiting list of boys who are not being serviced. This will never be acceptable. One of our challenges right now is in obtaining volunteers for the periodic fundraising or agency initiatives. We do need Bigs but we also need a base of people who can be contacted who will be willing to occasionally help out in singular ways. The needs are great and we very much need all of your help. Please spread the word and help us make these connections. In addition to this we’re actively recruiting a number of new board members as we’re about to say goodbye to several of our long standing members who have served for years. We have to say goodbye to Myrna Hildebrand and Betty Unrau as they’ve served their terms in office and must move on for now to board work with our agency. Lorraine Gerbrandt will also be timing out in March of this coming year. Each of these ladies has served with their hearts, money and sweat for years and also deserve the deepest thanks and accolades we can give. Your involvement has made a difference in the lives of children. This coming year will be a successful and a year of growth. I believe we’ll serve more children than ever before and continue in a proactive way to develop as an agency to serve in even greater ways. Jeremy D. Ward - President ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING / JUNE 8, 2010 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR’S REPORT It is hard to believe it has almost been a year and a half since I started at BBBSMW. It has gone fast and lots of things have changed and we have accomplished a lot. CASEWORK Traditional match numbers continue to remain very steady. We loose a few and gain a few and that is how it seems to go over the course of the year. We saw 6 closures over the year and 7 new matches made for an increase of 1 over all. We had one ISM match move from ISM to Traditional only to close a short time later. Currently we have 4 girls on the waiting list and 6 boys. The In-School Mentoring Program saw a huge turn around this year. We had a total of 10 matches last school year with 9 of those continuing on this year. With other things happening in the agency there was not time to do any real recruiting so we counted on some newspaper publicity and asking everyone we knew if they could help. To those 9 ISM’s returning from the previous year we added 7 other matches. The Teen ISM program had 5 matches at the end of last year all of whom were in grade 12 so they left at the end of the year. We attended assemblies at both GVE and MCI and held orientation sessions at both schools as well. We had a great turn out at both schools. We have 10 TISM’s in Morden and 5 in Winkler. So that makes for 17 TISM and ISM in Morden and 14 in Winkler. Our schools were very happy to be able to help that many kids. There is an interesting trend in both the Traditional and ISM program and that is very little interest from men. Just for interest sake; out of our 16 ISM matches between Morden and Winkler only 6 are male. 8 of the 10 TISM matches in Morden are matched with boys and only one of the mentors is male. Of 42 inquiries we have had in the past year only 7 have been from men. The need for men is great. Match Highlights: Traditional Matches Big Brother Wayne Forster and Little Brother Nathan will have been matched for 7 years in September Big Sister Corinna Siemens and Little Sister Tina have been matched for just over 6 years. Tina will be graduating and aging out at the end of June. We at the agency want to say congratulations and way to go to Tina! Big Brother Peter Loewen and Little Brother Colin have been matched for 5 years Big Brother Brad Funk and Little Brother Riley have been matched for almost 5 years and Brad has been involved with the agency for about 12 years Big Brother Jake Hildebrand and Little Brother Wesley have been matched for just over 4 years Big Sister Allison Sparling and Little Sister Rosie have also been matched for just over 4 years Big Brother Michael Grenier has been matched with Little Brother Kyle for 3 years. Michael has been a part of the agency for 10 years. Little Brother Brady moved out of the area so Big Brother Curt Reimer has closed his match. Brady and Curt had been matched for about 3 ½ years. Curt has been involved with the agency for 24 years. Curt has not decided if he will be matched again. Match Highlights: In-School Mentoring Irene Letkeman and Brad Neduzak are in their 8^th year as mentors with the ISM program. Marilyn Martens is in her 6^th year as mentor Rod Powell and Sharon Olafson are in their 5^th year Rita Heinrichs and Margie Toews are in their 4^th year We went from having no matches at ParklandSchool last year to having 6 matches there this year. PROGRAMMING A group of Bigs and Littles went to two Goldeyes games last summer. There was a Pool party at the Days Inn in June and a Scavenger hunt in August. There were 2 children in our programs who took advantage of our camp sponsorship program. 2 girls from Morden and 2 girls from Winkler were referred through our agency to attend a Tim Hortons Camp. They had an exciting 10 days at Camp in St. George, Ontario. Tim Horton’s treats the kids to a free lunch on CampDay. They also provide each child with a gift backpack full of things to take to camp. Families of children in our program also appreciate the help we give them towards the cost of passes to the Winkler Aquatic Centre. This helps to keep the kids busy over the summer. The ever popular Christmas Party was held at St. Paul’s UnitedChurch in Morden in December. We had a great turn out that night, all but 2 Bigs and 2 (waiting list) Littles were in attendance. Local businesses allow this to happen each year through their generous donation of all of the food for the party. Santa attended and had a gift for all the agency children. Small gifts of recognition were presented to our volunteers and Board members. Winkler Bible Camp had increased the cost of renting their facility and all the church asked for was a small donation. We did not have anyone to oversee our gym nights this year so we held two games nights over the winter. Everyone who attended had lots of fun. We had a couple of coffee nights for the Bigs over the winter as well. This was started so new Bigs and seasoned Bigs could get together and talk about how things were going. It also gave us a chance to find out some things like how our Bigs want to be recognized. We helped sell 50/50 tickets at a Winkler Flyers game in January. Big Sister Allison sang O Canada and The Flyers donated $340 to the agency. In January we helped to make a dream come true for one of our Littles. Little Brother Nathan had to go to see some specialists in Edmonton because of his eyes. He was losing his vision. I contacted the Edmonton Oilers about getting Nathan and his mom to an Oilers game while they were there. Nathan is a huge Oilers and Dustin Penner fan. The Oilers told me they would make sure that Nathan and his mom got to see a game. They got more than just seeing a game. They were taken to a practice where afterwards they got to meet Dustin and the Oiler’s goalie. They signed a stick for Nathan. They toured Rexall Place. They were picked up from their hotel in a limo to be taken to the game. They presented Nathan with a signed Oilers jersey and a bag full of goodies for Nathan’s brothers and sisters back home. They had club seats for the game and were introduced and shown on the jumbotron. It was an experience that he will never forget. Nathan has since been declared legally blind. Some of our Bigs and Littles and Parents attended a Manitoba Moose hockey game in February. The bowling party, held the night before Bowl for Kids Sake, was well attended, about 40 people. Bigs, Littles, and some parents, had a great time, and prizes were awarded to Littles who made the effort to collect pledges. We restructured the way we gave out prizes this year so more kids got prizes. They did a great job this year and raised over $1900. I think that is a record. ADMINISTRATION The Agency hired Ashley Wiebe to replace Ellie Reimer who retired in June. Ashley was a great addition and she not only took care of the Traditional program but also took over the ISM co-ordinator position. Unfortunately Ashley found full time employment elsewhere in March. We then hired Kevin Minnett. Kevin is still learning all the ins and outs but is working out great. The Agency underwent an Accreditation process this past year. We sent all kinds of paperwork to National in April. In June an Accreditor visited the Agency for two days. They spent much time going through files and talking to staff, volunteers, parents, board members and funders. Their report was sent to National and then we were informed what we were compliant in and what needed work. So we spent the next few months working on all those things that needed work. I am happy to report that we passed our Accreditation in March. 4 more years until the next one. BBBS of Canada was informed last winter that our online case management system (HOMES) would be going out of business. BBBSC has been working hard at trying to find a replacement for the HOMES system. We will still have use of the HOMES system until next March but after that we will probably have to go back to the dark ages and just type everything up in Word and then print it out to file. It remains to be seen what BBBSC will replace the HOMES system with but I am thinking it will take them a long time to get it rolled out. I was asked soon after I started with BBBSMW if I would consider chairing the RHA Central Healthy Communities Conference for 2010 in Morden. Mentoring was the theme and we held a very successful conference on April 23^rd. We had a 175 people attend and most comments were very favourable. It took a year worth of planning but it was worth it. BBBS got a lot of publicity out of that conference. We have a small pot of money left over to continue to support mentoring programs in Morden. A small committee will work together to see what we will do with those funds. Last fall the Morden and District United Way agreed to allow us to use their office space at 144 Nelson Street 2 days a week. This was to help us increase visibility in Morden. We participated in the Morden and District United Way Day of Caring. We submitted a project which was the cleaning up and refurbishing our ISM activity bins. Three volunteers were assigned to me to help with this project. We also had a group of volunteers help another organization with cleaning up the lake path. PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT I attended National Conference at the end of June last year. I went out a day early and attended the new E.D. training and then attended 3 more days of workshops. I also represented the Agency at the BBBSC national AGM. It was a great experience, learned lots, met lots of great people but I found 4 days to be a little overwhelming. We did not have any Regional Conferences last year. With hiring 2 new Caseworkers there was a considerable amount of staff time put in to training. I attended a workshop on Engaging New Canadians: How to Recruit and Support Newcomer Immigrant Volunteers. Kelly Wieler and I attended a couple of different Charity Information sessions mostly to do with tax and receipting. I attended a half day workshop on Effective Community Fundraising Both Ashley and I attended the Healthy Child Manitoba Mentoring workshop in November. We had a Manitoba staff meeting afterwards where we met with Karen Shaver, VP of Client Services for BBBSC. BBBSC has started holding webinars to help train so I took advantage of webinars on Wii Bowling, Donor Pro, HOMES and Giver’s Circle. FUNDRAISING/GRANTS/DONATIONS Ongoing support through grants was received once again from: Family Service and Consumer Affairs Healthy ChildMB. Morden and District United Way. Morden United Way also gave us an extra grant part way thought the year Winkler and District United Way Bowl for Kids continues to be our most effective ongoing fundraising activity. This year we surpassed our goal of $20,000. The event rose just over $21,000. Our goal for next year is $23,000. It has never been more than the $20,000. The annual Golf for Kids’ Sake Tournament brought in about $4000. We also held a sausage supper at the Harvest Festival that raised about $1600. We were the recipient of two Bingos through the Manitoba Community Services Council. Those brought in $6000. We had several smaller donations from Morden Lions Club, the Morden Elks Club and the Morden Thrift shop to help refurbish the ISM activity bins. General Donations over the past year were: $2,142 – Tim Hortons Smile Cookie Campaign $1,000 – CIBC Employees as Ambassadors Program $1000 - Winkler Police Bike Auction $1000 – Winkler Canadian Tire store, fundraising BBQ and donation. Financial sustainability continues to be a huge issue. Even thought we ended the year in the black continued efforts need to be made to ensure financial stability. We need people to sit on a Finance/ Fundraising Committee as well as people who are willing to help volunteer at events. Let us know if you can help. PUBLIC RELATIONS We have not done too much specifically on PR however every event we do brings us much needed coverage. We have tried to have a story on each of our programs in the paper this year. Every larger donation reaps us at least a picture in the paper and a news story on the radio. We had some free advertising in the Red River College Winter/Spring program guide. When we were at the Winkler Flyers game, they aired a few little “commercials” for us during the game. We held our first ever Bowl for Kids’ Sake kick off breakfast for all those who sponsored or had a team in last years event. 35 people showed up and I think that helped make a difference in us surpassing our goal this year. Nathan’s trip to Edmonton brought us a great story in the Morden Times. Kevin is very computer savvy so he is helping keep the website and our Facebook page current and looking good. If you are not already a friend on Facebook make sure and add us. Laura Matychuk