President

Hearts of gold. Warm hearts. Beautiful hearts. This is how I hear our members being described. It truly was heartwarming to see so many members attend our January meeting, and hear the message from our guest speaker, Leslie Wilcox as she greeted our ohana.

Our trusty Newsletter Editor, Coni Holland is creating this Newsletter with a brand new format. Thanks to Nancy Sparacino for teaching Coni how to use the Constant Contact format. This allows Coni to send the Newsletter directly to the members' email, rather than have the document first condensed and then sent as an attachment. In the technology world, this is progress!! This new format also relieves Tom Howes (husband of member, Jan Howes) of one of the duties he has faithfully done for ALH for many years. Thanks, Tom!

Our newly elected Nominating Committee, with Chairman Arden Moore, is actively seeking members to fill our leadership positions for 2017-2018. Please consider taking on a new role as an Officer on our Board of Directors. You have skills and knowledge to share, and know that you will have the support and backing of current and former leaders and members of the Board of Directors. The support I received as a brand new Board Member was invaluable, and I'm confident you'll have the same experience.

ALH is having a great year. The final Operation School Bell® In-Store Shopping event was held at the Kapolei Walmart on January 21. This was a year of growth for In-Store shopping events with a total of 7 events, and ALH members, school personnel, students and family all seem to favor this direction for Operation School Bell.  In January, the Operation Wildlife Program sent 3 teams to the schools in the Hilo district of the Big Island. The Thrift Store continues to increase sales, and this means more revenue for our programs. We couldn't do any of this without the hard work and enthusiasm of our members. A special thanks goes out to Betty Burrell for leading the acquisition of furniture and household goods from apartments in her building.

Thank you! 

 Ronnie

"The greatest use of life is to spend it on something that will outlast it." 

William James

Rolls, coffee/hot tea/iced tea

$25.00 (to keep this price we negotiated a combo lunch)

Deadline  Friday, February 3, 2017

Please RSVP to Andrea Cyriacks at 754-2367 OR  acyriacks@earthlink.net

(ATTN:  Help!  All Bakers.....We need assistance with dessert... ONE PLATTER OF A DOZEN OF GOODIES OF YOUR CHOICE..5 PLATTERS NEEDED)  Please contact

Miho Teipel  342-9151 or 

alohabutterfly@hawaii.rr.com Mahalo nui loa to Jane Au  for hosting at the Honolulu Club and Cathy Young for assisting at check-in.  Kudos to Dot Mason for inviting our lovely speaker Leslie Wilcox of PBS Hawaii.

               

Leslie Wilcox, CEO of Hawaii Public Television, with                              Nancy Sparacino, Ronnie Wassill, and Dot Mason at                               the ALH January Regular Meeting at the                      Honolulu Country Club.

  

Operation Wildlife had a busy time with 3 teams going to Hilo in January. There were three trips including 17 schools with 21 presentations.   Andrea Cyriacks, Ronnie Wassill, Miho Teipel, Joy Corbett, and Gerri Migita all participated! The end of February will have 2 teams going to Kauai on another four-day trip.

The February Oahu school schedule will be busy, with two schools scheduled so far, Waimalu Elementary (Feb. 9) and Waianae Elementary(Feb 16).  If anyone would like to help out or just view the presentation, please call Kathy Takemoto at 256-1549. 

The Honolulu Zoo is active with tourists and school field trips. Their excitement is infectious! We got our cheetah skin back on the table again; it was mended by Shelby, our Docent Coordinator! Children love to hear about the Cheetah and feel its claws!

OWLs are having fun; come and join us!  Call Betty Parinas at 487-8061 or 782-7534.

Ronnie Wassill and Andrea Cyriacks arriving at Pahoa      Elementary School.

Andrea delivering the Endangered Species presentation to the 4th Graders at Kea'au Elementary School.

Melanie Wogan purchased and delivered 30 water bottles to Youth Outreach. Mahalo, Melanie. These are always needed.

Our Lullaby packing was very successful. With the help of Pat Dixon, Barbara Baker, Vicki Fay, Jane Winslow and my good friend Johanna Leiato we packed 242 layettes. Johanna also donated 4 beautiful baby quilts that she made. These will all be delivered to Castle, Kaiser and Kapiolani hospitals. Thank you ladies for all your help.

Ellen Dihel and Laurelyn Berger purchased and delivered men's slippers, men's underwear,  women's underwear, pull-ups for girl and boy toddlers, underwear for keiki three and under,and underwear for girls and boys  ages 4-14.  That was a lot of shopping. Thank you.

Our Next Step Shelter annual birthday party for the keiki who live there, will be on Friday February 24th. Anyone wishing to help purchase goodies for the party or attend the party, please let me know. You can call me at 254-2 607.

Our next Lullaby packing will be on Friday, March 3rd at 9:00 a.m, at my home. Everyone is welcome to come.

         

Our organization was founded to seek out and provide for unmet needs in our community.  To the limit of our resources, we do that, and have done it for forty-five years. No matter what your contribution to Assistance League is, you are an important part of this mission.  Be proud!

We should all be proud of the chairmen of our Programs. They work very hard, for very little recognition, but for the satisfaction of knowing that they make a difference in the lives of our people.  Please thank  Betty Parinas (Operation Wildlife),  Gerri Migita (Operation School Bell),   Lavonne Holmberg (Tutu Tutorial),  Mary Kay Junk (We Care) and  Sandy Wells (Share) for their dedicated work on our programs.

 The New Year has been busy. For the past 16 workdays at our Shop, we made over $1,000 each day, except for one. We need to address the issue of who will come in on Monday mornings  and stay while the floors are cleaned. This is very important and can only be done on Mondays. Marti Frensley has been doing this for years but is unable to do so now.  Perhaps there might be two members who could work as a team to be sure Mondays are covered. United Cerebral Palsy picks up our unwanted donations on Wednesday mornings. We can sometimes use an additional person to be on-site for these pick-ups. Several people have been coming upstairs to help, which means that merchandise gets sorted, priced, and downstairs to be sold.  We have some customers who come in two times a day to see if we have brought anything new to the sales floor.     

Arden Moore

                        Sharon's Ride

As 2016 came to an end the Share Program had donated $10,866 worth of goods to the community, serving 7,630 individuals.

Thank you to the members of the Strategic Planning Committee for all their hard work. We have had two very productive meetings so far this year. Part of our job is to continually monitor and evaluate our programs as to how we can improve them. We have reviewed the evaluation summary report from last year's evaluation meetings, and have come up with an Action Plan based on the input of all the members. This Action Plan will be shared with everyone at our February Regular Meeting.