September Chapter Meeting Fun and Informative

What a great September chapter meeting at Teresa Palmitier's lovely home. Joy Aaronson, Community Partnerships Coordinator - Head Start, and Head Start site director and  teacher Nicole Neuhalfen from Family Shelter Services Dupage in Wheaton, gave us a great overview of their mission and how all the Operation Early Reading backpacks we delivered last week are used in Head Start classrooms and home-based programs. We are happy to collaborate with FSS. Members also previewed the new Assistance League impact video and the wonderful rack cards created by VP Marketing Communications Linda Legner. 

Operation Early Reading delivers to Metropolitan Family Services

It was nice meeting with Joy Aaronson, Community Partnerships Coordinator - Head Start and Nicole Cameron, Head Start Director at at Metropolitan Family Services Dupage in Wheaton on September 24. Members assisted Operation Early Reading chairs Patricia Van Hoegarden and Eileen Hanley deliver 32 bins of reading backpacks for school and home-based Head Start programs.

Fernanda Valentino, VP Philanthropic Programs, Joy Aaronson, Nicole Cameron, Jane Cella,  co-chairs Patricia Van Hoegarden and  Eileen Hanley, Marianne Cortopassi

Assistance League® takes Florida by storm, National Conference a huge success

Marianne and Heather

Heather Laughman, president Assistance League of Chicagoland West, and Marianne Cortopassi, member National Marketing Communications Committee, attended the National Assistance League Conference in Orlando, FL on September 3 to 7. The theme was Imagine, Inspire, Innovate.

 Marilyn Panter, President, AL St. Louis

Charlene Liesveld, President AL Omaha

 Diane Dwyer, AL Huntington Beach,

For more on conference, read the article below, written for the National Assistance League website by Marianne Cortopassi.

Hundreds of Assistance League members from around the country converged in Orlando September 3-7 for an opportunity to inspire innovative approaches to community volunteerism through networking, educational sessions and motivational presentations by keynote speakers.

But the 52nd annual National Conference was not business as usual.

While Assistance League has a long tradition of doing good in the communities it serves, the national organization garnered front page and television news coverage in Central Florida by providing clothing to 900 students in need, and arranging to do so in a state without a single Assistance League chapter.

Thirteen National Board officers, including President Nancy Reberger, clothed 150 children at Fallas National Stores on September 3, and then announced that an additional 750 children would receive merchandise vouchers.

As amazing as this generosity seemed to the local population, Assistance League's signature Operation School Bell® program has clothed nearly four million children since 1958 and continues to serve over 330,000 children on an annual basis.

At a celebration luncheon, School District of Osceola County Superintendent Melba Luciano thanked Assistance League for collaborating with Fallas National Stores for the donation of two uniforms each, shoes and other necessities for elementary students at three district schools, where 70 percent of students are eligible for free or reduced lunch and some are homeless.

The only thing we ask is that the community comes to help us," said Luciano. "That is our district goal. For you to come to us, and ask can we come help, we are so appreciative."

Another conference highlight was the preview screening of a powerful national impact video that positions Assistance League as a leading provider of philanthropic programs administered exclusively by volunteers to target specific individual and community needs.

The video was funded through a generous grant from Newman's Own, one of the sponsors of National Make A Difference Day, in recognition of Assistance League's success as one of the ten national honorees.

Individual chapters also participated in the inaugural Chapter Showcase, a colorful and expressive exhibition that lined the hotel's common areas and detailed success stories from Albuquerque to Ventura County and several dozen cities in between.

President Reberger applauded the efforts of all 120 chapters at the annual meeting.

"The philanthropic programs you manage and how they make a positive difference in your communities is the heart and soul of our organization," Reberger said. "They are why we exist. It is inspirational to hear about the programs and to hear members share their heartwarming experiences."

Attendees agree that networking is a wonderful part of National Conference. As a member from the St. Louis chapter explained, "Networking is an outgrowth of the presentations. We hear new ideas, then start talking to the people who implement them."

Assistance League Impact Video

Assistance League in the News

 

  

Assistance League volunteers focus on serving others 

Sara Clarkson

“Would you like to help us pack?”

If an Assistance League of Chicagoland West volunteer asks you that, best put on some jeans or sweatpants. No need to get all gussied up, and do not expect a silver tea service with refreshments. If the ladies take a break, you’ll find your coffee in a paper cup.

Those ladies are asking you to work packing hundreds of coats for needy school children in our area. They will be focused and serious and all about completing their task. That activity and that focus is what an assistance league member means by “hands-on,” and that is what attracts women to volunteer for the assistance league.

Sept. 4, for example, was a rainy day good for sleeping in, reading books or catching up on paperwork, but inside the assistance league office at 120 E. Ogden Ave., it was abuzz with activity. There more than a dozen volunteers — maybe 14, maybe 13 but they were moving pretty quickly and hard to count amidst all the mountains of boxes — were readying winter jackets. They were unpacking them from the warehouse and repacking them with pairs of winter gloves and winter hats into boxes labeled for various ages.

This fall, the assistance league will distribute 2,300 winter coats to school children in the greater Hinsdale area. That number represents an increase of 600 coats, and thus 600 children, from just a few years ago, according to Diane Kurtz, one of five co-chairs of Operation School Bell. Consider that increase — from 1,700 to 2,300 coats — and what it means: for one, just how much need there is right here in our own backyard, and for another, that a child is suffering form that need, and finally that this group of women helps to fill that need.

These women don’t just pack up the coats, according to Laila Alamuddin, another co-chair with Maria Garino, Maureen Hegarty and Phyllis Young. Volunteers will later go to the schools and distribute the coats directly to the kids. That is a joyful day when the women interact directly with the people they are serving, and indeed the programs that ALCW runs are like that — volunteers interact directly with the people they serve.

In addition to providing coats for younger elementary children, the assistance league is working on a pilot program in partnership with Kohl’s to serve middle school-age kids, kids who would not want to be pulled from class and given a coat, for example, but still have need. This program will give those kids a $75 gift card and let them choose clothing on a specific shopping night. According to Fernanda Valentino, many of these kids are in need of appropriate gym shoes for example.

Valentino is the assistance league’s vice president of philanthropy. She oversees its five programs: Operation School Bell; Operation New Start, providing new kitchen equipment to those leaving homelessness and entering new living situations; Operation Early Reading, providing backpacks with books and crayons for early readers; Operation Scholarship Support, giving $1,000 scholarships for College of DuPage; and Operation Project Stepping Stone to help teen mothers.

The assistance league’s major fundraiser is the annual Books and Brunch in November, one of my favorites not just because it involves books and brunch but also boutique shopping and draws several hundred women (and a few men) from the area. For more information including membership information, visit www.alcw.org.