Panera, YUM!

This morning Keith and Beth from Mix 96.7 hosted a live remote at Panera and used the time to encourage customers to bring in non-perishables for us.

Panera generously donated a free coffee and bagel for anyone who brought things in! I was happily suprised by the large amount of items we accumulated. A lot of people just stopped to drop things off and never even asked for the free coffee and bagel. What a great community we have.

The Panera people were cheery as could be and seemed perfectly fine with their store being taken over by people, radio equipment and piles of canned goods . They were so nice.

Unfortunately today was a great day to have a load of donations for the shelter since its full of residents. Kari, the Outreach Case Manager took time out of her schedule to get the donations back to the shelter and take a picture. Nice job Kari!

And of course anywhere Keith and Beth go its a party. There was a lot of laughing and hooting and hollering. Such a fun way to do good works. Thanks everyone!

Charles Construction Services Golf Outing

As many of you know, each year Charles Construction Services organizes a golf outing that benefits us. It was held last Friday, 9/19 at Red Hawk. This was the 7th year I believe, and they were on track to break a cumulative amount raised over the 7 years of $100,000!!!

What a committment. It really is time consuming for a business to take on something like this. It has really grown into such a wonderful and unique opportunity. Its almost like a homecoming for Open Arms supporters. Every year has its fill of current and past board members, officials, donors and people who are linked to Charles Construction Services and come for the fun.

It was an absolutely beautiful day, the food from Red Pig Inn was delicious and the people at Red Hawk couldn't have been nicer. The course was gorgeous.

There were tons of great prizes donated by faithful sponsors. I think just about everyone left with something.

Thanks a ton to everyone who came out!

Zonta

Wednesday September 17th I was privileged enough to be invited as a speaker to our local Zonta Club. What a dynamic group of women!

Gender based violence is one of their areas of focus and as such they have been great supporters, both as a club and as individuals. I am always impressed with how warm and welcoming they are and how willing they are to hear about tough issues confronting our community.

I spoke about the increase we have seen in numbers of people needing services in the aftermath of the flood. Protection orders and persons sheltered have doubled, supervised visits have about tripled. These are trying times. It really helps when we know we have allies who are as concerned as we are about the issue.

Sssshhhh! Its a secret.

We have a secret, well, sort of. We have planned a new event for the Spring and if it is as much fun as we think it will be we would like to do it more than once.

Ever wished a man could walk a mile in your shoes....well maybe he can.

Go here for details: http://www.walkamileinhershoes.org/

She's almost here!!

We are getting so exicted! As many of you know, the actress Robin Givens is coming to our Annual Meeting! Jodi and I worked together for a whole day last week on finalizing details and Jodi spoke with Robin and her assistant on Friday.

They were very kind and said that Robin would be very flexible and help us in any way she could. I have seen videos of Robin speaking and she is very powerful.

Denise Brown was here last year and as many of you know the night was very moving. Denise was so down to earth and gracious. We expect another wonderful event this year. You can get tickets by calling the office, 419-420-9261, or going to our website,www.openarmsfindlay.org. Tickets are $50 for the meal and meeting where Robin will speak. For $75 you can participate in a meet and greet with Robin.

The meeting is October 6th at the Findlay Country Club at 7 p.m.

We are so lucky that Findlay Service League has stepped forward as the major sponsor to make this possible. Thank you ladies!

P.S. Robin has a role in the Tyler Perry movie, The Family that Preys. It came out Friday. Consider seeing it. It was great and Robin was of course awesome.

Prevention Programs are Booming

Erin, the Program Manager that oversees Child Advocacy and Prevention Programming stopped in my office yesterday to say that schools have been very responsive this year to scheduling prevention programs.

They scheduled more than 60 speeches for the last couple months of 2008 and she thinks the number of kids who went through prevention programs this year might be around 8,000! Thats massive!

Kudos to the teachers who take precious classroom time to host these sessions. Its got to be hard. My teacher friends can barely get regular curriculum done, adding this shows a great dedication on their part to the welfare of their students. The schools have always been gracious to us, we are proud to serve them.

And of course lets not forget the Community Foundation who made the funding of the programs possible and Jenna, our bubbly Prevention Coordinator, we're just sure she's the reason we keep getting invited back .

Calling All Board Alumni

We are trying to start a sort of Board Alumni Group. If you know anyone who previously served on the Open Arms Board ask them to contact us so we can get their updated information.

We want to keep them apprised of agency news, ask their advice for agency planning, give them advance notice of events and in 2009 we will be celebrating 30 years since our founding. We want to give our founding board members special recognition at that annual meeting.

Sure I know it s more than a year away, but if you know us you know it will take us that long to find everyone!

Welcome to the Open Arms Blog!!

Welcome! We thought we'd give this 'connection through technology' thing a try. We're rushing right into the 21st century headlong. Well...not really. I'll probably have to find a middle schooler to help me manage this thing.

Here is the serious scoop. Those of us that work and volunteer with Open Arms know what a great organization it is. We have a ton of fun and do good work. We have lots of great stories to share, needs to telegraph and interesting information about whats happening on the front lines of our community. In short, a lot to chat about!

It is often the case that there are folks who want to keep in touch with us. Its especially hard for departing board members who feel such a part of the cause to feel a bit unplugged after they leave. We thought that if we started a simple blog our supporters and interested parties could log in occassionally to check in and see what's up, sort of like visiting home for a second.

We'll post all kinds of information here, events, little stories from our daily life, information about struggles or needs, heck we'll even answer questions if you have them. You'll hear a lot from me, Beth Meeks, the Executive Director, but the Program Managers, Communications Coordinator and maybe other celebrity guests will chime in here and there.

Hurry back...I can already think of a million fun things to tell you!