Our annual egg hunt was a big success this past weekend. The perfect weather led to a great turnout and everyone had a great time. Egg hunt grand-poobah, Dave Hoel, reported that he has found almost no Easter inventory in the stores so he’s concerned about being able to get prizes and plastic eggs for next year. Dave thanked all those who participated. Some photos are shown below.
President Cindy Carlson read a thank-you note from Abby N., who attended Camp RYLA as one of our representatives.
Cindy also passed around a school progress report for our Maman and Sharifa, our Remember Niger sponsored students. All grades were excellent, by the way.
Contributions to the club’s John Marg-Patton Memorial Fund have totaled over $6,600. The Board has already found some worthy causes to contribute to and more contributions are planned for the future.
We have a district matching grant proposal in process to provide E.C.H.O. with some much needed farm equipment. More news as the proposal moves forward.
The 4:01 meeting for this Thursday has been cancelled to allow the group, and any others, to attend Maria’s softball game at Irondale, April 25th at 4:30PM. Come and help us root for Maria, and the team.
Jason Slama was married in the Minnesota north woods this past week. Congrats, Jason.
Our speaker today was Pam Wolf, Executive Director of Life Prep Academy. Life Prep Academy is a faith-based school and residence designed to meet the needs of homeless and/or high risk teens. Pam spoke to us a year ago about changes that that made room for up to 16 homeless high school students to live and study at Life Prep. Life Prep was the recipient of last year’s “Fund-a-Cause” effort at the Gold Plate Dinner. The funds we raised allowed us to purchase several beds for the Academy. Because the demand for residence-based education is quite variable in the target homeless population, Life prep is looking for ways to broaden its impact by offering emergency overnight shelter for up to two youth as well as looking at partnering with Stepping Stones to offer a transitional program for their clients.
Like most charitable organizations, Life Prep faces financial challenges despite the fact that its staff is all volunteer. They don’t ask for and wouldn’t accept government funding, so they are dependent on private donations and corporate sponsorships. They also accept donations for their annual garage sale fundraiser. This year’s garage sale is from June 6th through 9th.
Pam and Ed James are pictured below,
