President’s Perspective

Dear JLC members and friends,

Greetings! As we wind down from Winter and a full year of COVID, I am looking forward to Spring with a renewed sense of purpose. Since last Spring, we have pivoted in ways we never expected, took on new challenges and offered grace in between. I am sincerely grateful for each of you and your commitment to the League and the work we do.

Each moment of work our members have contributed to the League and community means a little more than ever before. A few highlights include;

Our Membership Engagement team has launched a new “Coffee Talk” program pairing JLC members with another member who is “new” to them for 30-minute monthly coffee chats. This has been a very fun exercise in meeting new members and catching up with long time friends.

The JLC Gardeners partnered with our Program Acceleration team to organize Sustainers and Actives together over three days to wrap more than 5,000 diapers for Sweet Cheeks Diaper Bank, as well as decorate Sweet Cheeks’ offices for the holiday

JLC members wrote notes of encouragement to senior citizens experiencing isolation as part of United Way’s goal to draft 15,000 notes distributed through 17 partner agencies.

We helped combat food insecurity by assembling 1,000+ “power packs” for Freestore Foodbank, and hundreds of sandwiches for Our Daily Bread

We hosted JLC supply drives that include Push 4 Pencils to benefit Crayons to Computers, kitchen kits for La Soupe, and goodie bags for babies and families in Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICUs) with Snow Bunny Baby Projects Renovations at the Columbia Center are well underway. They include fresh paint and carpet throughout the building, new chairs for the auditorium, updated meeting room spaces and soon, basement updates!

Our Annual Fund Campaign continues for its seventh year with a goal of raising $15,000 towards our operating budget.

Our Program Development committee is hard at work selecting a new initiative for the League to support for the upcoming three years. We have had two sessions with the four non-profits as we narrowed down the applicant pool to two for our vote in April.

Along with the Board, EMT and our councils, I know we are excited to end the year strong with our commitment to the League and community.

Be a Builder: of trust. of community. of people.

Cheers,

Sarah E. Rieger JLC President