Email Newsletter for April 2008
West Cascade Peace Corps Association
Email Newsletter for April 2008
Greetings from the West Cascade Peace Corps Association!
In this edition of our electronic newsletter, you'll find:
- notices about upcoming events
- a summary of the board meeting
- links to some interesting stories online
- plus a few other updates
Upcoming Events
April 22: The most important upcoming event is the Nomination Party, which will be held tomorrow evening at the Many Nations Longhouse on the U of O campus. As with our potlucks, RPCVs are asked to bring a dish to share. However, the really big deal is that this is a chance to celebrate the nominations of new volunteers and welcome them into the Peace Corps community. I remember going to my nomination party just after I was accepted to go to Benin, West Africa in 2003. I really enjoyed it, and it was West Cascade that made it possible.
May 4: The Peace Corps and the National Peace Corps Association, in cooperation with the Seattle Area Peace Corps Association, will host the 2008 Peace Corps Expo in Seattle, Washington on May 4th. James Cloutier is going up to this event. If you'd be interested in joining him, please drop him a line at president@westcascadepca.org.
May 8: Our monthly board meeting will be held on May 8th. We will be discussing subcommittees and service projects. As always, we welcome the input of all of our members. You don't have to be on the board to stop by and let us know what you think. For directions, call 607-4140 or send email to info@westcascadepca.org.
May 9: The bimonthly potluck will be on May 9th at 6:00 pm at the home of George and Diane Jeffcott. We have a couple of options for speaker, so check the website in the coming weeks for more information.
Summary of the WCPCA minutes, 4/10/08
Treasurer's Report:
Funds on hand are the following:
Beryl's memorial fund: $22,589
Business checking: $5,573
business savings: $5
Business money market: $509
The funds in Beryl's memorial account will be invested in a twelve
year bond paying 6% annually with Edward Jones Investments. The
board asked our treasurer to close the business money market account
and invest those funds plus $2,500 from the business checking
account in a six month CD with Oregon Community Credit Union.
We sent $300 to Hannah Klausman, a Eugene PCV working in Mongolia,
to use at her high school. She'll apply the funds to equipping a
school library.
Board members will be contacting by phone and email WCPCA members
whose memberships have recently expired or soon will expire to
encourage them to renew. We discussed ways to recruit new members.
We discussed allocating some organizational activities to
subcommittees. We need to contact members who've agreed to help
with specific tasks. We discussed membership fees and agreed to
keep them the same but allow those who can't pay to receive a
reduction. They'll indicate their situation in an email as
indicated on the website.
We discussed what new service projects we might identify to join in
this community. Members with suggestions for such projects should
email the president, Jame Cloutier.
Brett, the U of O PC Recruiter, gave us an update on preparations
for the NOM party on April 22nd. We made further plans for this
event.
The board nominated Joe Hindman as a candidate for the West Coast
NPCA representative.
The next service project will be the clean up after the Chef's Night
Out fundraiser.
Coming up:
Potluck: Friday, May 9, 6:00pm, 363 Mary Lane. We're interested in
having Bob Krites, a former WCPCA member, talk about his 'Kids
Helping Kids' program in Brazil.
Northwest Regional Campout will be August 8-10 at Davenport, WA.
Links to Information of Interest
The ACLU has sent a letter to the Peace Corps demanding that it change its policy of barring people with HIV from serving as volunteers. This was done on behalf of a volunteer serving in Ukraine who during his midservice exam tested positive for HIV and then was medically separated.
(More information)
Want to know what legislation Congress has in the works for the Peace Corps? The NPCA has a page covering pending legislation so that you can keep up.
If that isn't enough, OpenCongress.org is a website that lets you track any bill, Senator, Represenative, or issue that might matter to you. Pretty cool if you want to say up to date.
If you still haven't checked out the Peace Corps Wiki, you should really give it a try. Not only is there lots of information there, but you can contribute to it easily. For those who worry "What if I edit a page and then someone else comes along and screws it all up?", don't fear. One of the really cool features of wikis is that changes can be rolled back to a previous version. This makes it easy for the maintainer to keep order. Also, the administrators can lock pages to prevent editing if there is a problem.
(More information)
Announcements and Requests
As noted above, James Cloutier is going to be heading up to the Peace Corps Expo in Seattle on May 4th. If you'd like to join him, let him know at president@westcascadepca.org.
Also as noted above, we are going to be doing more work on subcommittees and service projects in near future. But to really be effective, we need help from our members. If you would like to help out with membership, organize an activity, or suggest a service project, let us know at info@westcascadepca.org or come by the board meeting.
We are thinking of putting up section of the West Cascade website to house photos from our members of their service. Does this sound like something you'd be interested in? This would have to be something that members contributed to, otherwise it wouldn't be very useful. So, let us know what you think by calling 607-4140 or sending an email to info@westcascadepca.org.
Lastly, if you have information on a project that West Cascade helped out with, we'd love to put it on our projects page.
