Soaring

Soaring

March 2024

Growth * Respect * Choice * Integrity * Fellowship * Learning

Our Power of Love Gala Will Be Here Before You Know It! Our 51st Anniversary celebration will be held Tuesday evening, May 21st at 6PM at the Metropolitan Ballroom in Golden Valley. As always, the event includes a social hour, silent auction including our fabulous artist-designed birdhouses (over 75 in process), dinner, entertainment, and an inspirational program.

Our Gala Chair is Taree Leach-Junkersfeld. Taree serves on our Board of Directors and is very passionate about our mission. Her brother, John, is a client served at Our House Portland.

Our silent auction will open online a week before our event and you can bid to win even if you can’t attend. We welcome auction donations of gift cards, wines & spirits, and fun baskets.

Sponsorships start at just $300, all sponsorships include tickets, and individual tickets are a bargain at just $100. Join us for a fun night for a great cause!

Our emcee this year is Miss Shannan Paul. Since her cubicle days as a marketing and communications professional for several Fortune 100 companies, Miss Shannan has moved on to become a Radio and Television host, Comedian, Speaker, Actress, Certified Benefit Auctioneer, and proud former player of the Women’s Professional Football League. She is a Multidimensional Event Leader, who uses her talents to care for her son, and make the lives of other people better. You can see Miss Shannan as a regular on “The Jason Show,” hear Miss Shannan weekly on MyTalk 107.1 co-hosting the “Financial Health and Wealth Show” and the “Red Hot Real Estate Show,” and you can download her podcast called “Be Our Geek.” You’ll also hear Miss Shannan as the voice of Wingspan’s ad that will replay through March on MyTalk!

Catch her “Comedy Through the Chaos” show at Crooner’s on March 21st.

Empowering Abilities. Nurturing Spirits. Caring for Life.

We’re excited to announce that our headliner this year is Kat Perkins and her band! Kat appeared on NBC’s The Voice Season 6 and advanced to the show’s finals. Mentored by Adam Levine, Kat climbed her way to fourth place! A native of the tiny town of Scranton, ND, Kat has resided in Minneapolis, Minnesota since 1999. Kat founded The Rising Star Foundation in 2015 fostering financial aid to up and coming musicians in need! Music and education is her passion and she tries to combine them whenever possible!

Our Gala Sponsors Are Amazing!

We’d like to thank our most recent sponsors including our $15,000 Presenting Sponsor, Digital Mass, and our friends at Geritom Medical who are sponsoring at the $10,000 Platinum level. South Robert Street Business Association and John & Jan Thames are $5,000 Diamond level sponsors, and Mark & Tracy Mooney and Dual Citizen Brewing Company are $3,000 Ruby sponsors. The Christensen Group and Jeff & Wendy Thames are $2,500 Sapphire sponsors, and the Eickhoff Family is a $2,000 Amethyst sponsor. Current $1,500 level Gold sponsors include Lotus Pharmacy, The Standard, Ralph & Mary Pat Davini, Taree Leach-Junkersfeld & Mark Junkersfeld, and Kim & Tyler Wolff. Our $1,000 Topaz sponsors are Mary Anderson jointly with Brian & Joanne Mullen. Royal Star Furniture is a $500 Social Hour sponsor and Cummings Mobility is a $500 chocolate sponsor. Cady Business Technology and TSE, Inc. are back with $300 for Bronze. We’re so grateful for the generous support! To sponsor, purchase tickets, or to donate to the Fund A Need, contact Development Officer Darolyn Gray at 651.888.3112 or email dgray@wingspanlife.org

Our Spring Fundraiser with Gertens is on.

Order by March 25th!

Are daydreams of returning to your garden already blooming? You can start preparing to make those fantasies a reality by participating in Wingspan’s fundraiser in partnership with Gertens! Just visit www.gertensfundraising.com and enter the code “780” to access Wingspan’s fundraiser site.

From succulents, to seeds, to vegetables, to perennials, you’re sure to find anything your garden, windowsill, or crisper might need this spring. Looking for more inspiration?

Consider buying a plant card, and discover your dream plant at the Gertens store at 5500 Blaine Ave E, Inver Grove Heights, MN 55076.

Items purchased through the online link go far beyond planting a seed in your garden- they plant a seed of hope for the clients we serve. Note that 30% of all plant sales and 15% of all plant card sales will go to Wingspan to help fill funding gaps to support technology upgrades, art and music programs, or to ongoing needs for new handicap accessible vans, as well as furniture, appliances and accessibility remodeling in our 31 group homes. Orders must be completed by 10 PM on Monday, March 25th, and your order will be available for pick up at our Plato office (30 East Plato boulevard in St. Paul), on May 2nd - May 3rd, as well as May 6th May 10th, between 8:00AM and 3:30PM. For more information, contact Keller Karlstrom at kkarlstrom@wingspanlife.org

Rake a Difference!

As we look toward spring and summer volunteering, we thank those who have already answered the call. Cultivate Co-op, a youth ministry in Iowa, will be partnering with us for the service portion of their Power Connection Work Camp in July, and will visit four of our group homes. The camp takes place twice every three years, and we were lucky enough to have their help with gardening at our group homes in 2022 as well.

We also look forward to hosting the Yale Alumni of the Northwest again this spring. They are longtime champions of our Troseth group home, and were with us again last fall as they tackled one of our toughest annual raking projects- no problem is too big for the Yale volunteers! We also look forward to hosting groups from Associated Bank again this spring. Last April, they came to our Plato office and assisted with litter cleanup and re-painting our bench and planter boxes. They have also consistently helped with fall clean up at several of our biggest properties.

Interested in setting up a volunteer event with Wingspan?

Please email Keller Karlstrom at kkarlstrom@wingspanlife. org. Our highest volunteer need is for yard beautification around our group homes, and volunteers are essential for the weeding, planting, trimming, pruning, raking, mulch laying, and painting.

Our Free Multicultural Performances Have Been Very Popular Since last summer, we’ve offered nine free concerts. In August we were treated to Aztec Indigenous music and dance by Kalpulli KetzalCoatlicue, and in September we enjoyed music of South India with Nirmala Rajasekar--one of the premier Saraswathi veena players in the world. In October, we listened to Romani music by Talking Strings. In November, our Glee Club performed at a concert with Siama’s Congo Roots. Last Saturday we enjoyed music and dance from Haiti with Afoutayi. Our clients played bucket drums or worked with shakers and wooden sticks before dancing with colorful scarves. Also in February, we’ll enjoy “Dragons, Monkeys and Flutes” with Chinese music and storytelling by Zhang Ling and Rhonda Lund. In March we’ll enjoy the magic of Celtic music and dance with Scottish and Irish tunes and storytelling. Our last two performances of the series conclude with Karibuni performing music and dance of the Congo and South Africa and, finally, Nanilo will perform songs in Russian, Yiddish and Hebrew. We’ve all really enjoyed exploring culture through music and dance.

These activities are made possible, in part, by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund. Your gifts also support our rich programming.

Executive Director’s Corner-A Note from Therese Davis Board of Directors Angela O’Neill, Chair Joe Eickhoff, Vice Chair Roz Allyson, Treasurer Mary Anderson Taree Leach-Junkersfeld Mark Mooney Bruce Smith Kim Wolff John Thames, Chair Emeritus Executive Director Therese Davis Editor Pam Carlson Story Contributors Therese Davis Darolyn Gray Keller Karlstrom

It’s been a busy winter for Wingspan and we’ve certainly appreciated the milder weather. Our enrichment calendar continues to very full these next few months and we know how much our clients have enjoyed learning and participating in so many fun activities.

The 2024 legislative session is in process and we appreciate that our friends at ARRM.org continue to advocate for us as Congress and the Minnesota legislature consider policies impacting people with disabilities. As always, we are looking forward to participating in Disability Services Day at the Capitol on March 19th. Each year, this is Minnesota’s biggest rally to advocate for people with disabilities, their irreplaceable support system, and their right to live independent and rewarding lives. Our clients and staff enjoy raising their voices inside the rotunda.

Think spring! We’re looking forward to seeing many of you at our Power of Love Gala on May 21st at the Metropolitan Ballroom.

You’ll find the details inside this newsletter.

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