January 2020 Newsletter
HAPPY NEW YEAR/NEW DECADE Welcome as we enter our 12th year….Let’s make 12 our best year ever.
This are not just “pie-in-the-sky” words; we truly have high expectations and solid ideas, goals and objectives for this 20/20 vision year.
If you haven’t read our newsletter before, we hope you will enjoy its information. This is the best way to keep track of what’s going on; our email list if 950+ strong, so this is the best methodology for getting the news out to everybody. Texting is not a workable method here.
This newsletter will review our activities for December (as there wasn’t a December meeting) and then go on to the explosion of what’s ahead for the New Year.
Our report usually begins with announcement of the Gift Basket Raffle. Our monthly Gift Raffle portion of the meeting will begin with February. Again, for those who are new, we have participants sign up for a month of his/her choice. A beautiful gift basket is donated by that person for raffle; the proceeds go to the donor’s charity of choice. Tickets are 3/$5. We instituted this Gift Basket idea a couple of years ago because, although we have had the Charity Raffle since our inception, it’s likely that not every one will win and be able to choose their charity. The Charity Raffles are $!0/ticket and that pull is done at the end of our meeting. For 2020, here is the roster for Gift Raffle donors (I’m putting it here so we all remember):
- February – Elissa Ramirez
- March – Rosalind Diaz
- April – Debbie Santora
- May – Jeannette Munda
- June – Michele Yacovello
- July – Safryyah A.
- August – Carol Lundrigan/Jayne Cooper
- September – Erica/Jen Weile/Sam Rebecca
- October – Joann Magee
- November – Joan Baggs
- *December we don’t have an “official” meeting
CHARITY RAFFLE
As is our 11-year custom, we offered our $10 Charity Raffle tickets at the end of the meeting. Half of the proceeds are kept with the Giving Circle and the other half goes to the winner’s favorite charity. So last night (1/15/2020), yours truly was the winner of $205 (the full pot was $410). I haven’t won in a very long time, but I had the perfect “give” for my money. Earlier when I spewed my remarks for the evening, I mentioned that Out of the Storm Sandy had emailed an S.O.S. for food needed for their residents. We are long-time supporters of Claudette Duff and her Out of the Storm NFP, so this was a great opportunity to fill their request. We will give my winnings in the form of a ShopRite Gift Card so some extra food can be bought and distributed to the senior residents.
This is a good time to reiterate that you can pay a half year or full year ahead to be included in each month’s Charity Raffle. This works for many who know they can’t make every monthly meeting. If this sounds like a good option for you, please contact Michele or Ev to do this “bookkeeping.”
REVIEW OF DECEMBER/HOLIDAY ACTIVITIES:
Our December 4 annual holiday brunch at Cantertury (Senior) Housing was terrific. “The Dreamers” musical trio performed and the audience (ActCares, New Lane Seniors, Canterbury Seniors) loved them. They danced and swayed all afternoon. They also had lots of desserts to fill their late-afternoon cravings. We have already booked The Dreamers again for this year (first week in December).
Our two Project Hospitality Birthday Party teams converged to host two combo holiday/ birthday parties for the kids at the homeless shelter. I want to remind you that these parties are expensive (food, gift bags, games, etc.) so you might want to filter some of your raffle winnings this way through the year. Our original team is Phyllis O’Hanlon and Lucille Lenza and our new team is headed by Tina Lesevic and Haydee Correa. At holiday time, these ladies were able to get more donations of goodies than usual, but, again, these events are expensive. In addition to the birthday parties, Tina and Haydee will be hosting a February or March party to pay attention to the MOTHERS at Project Hospitality. We will be providing gently-used purses and tote bags full of hygiene products and cosmetic items to these ladies as well as a nice dessert table. Tina will also incorporate educational information (she is a Nurse Practitioner/Hospice Care Nurse) for the ladies. If the gathering is in February, she will honor Heart Health and in March she would honor Women in General in recognition of International Women’s Day (March 8).
December 7 provided us another wonderful, easy fundraising opportunity. BARNES & NOBLE BOOKFAIRS supported the Staten Island Giving Circe, Inc. at it’s Saturday, December 7, 2019 Staten Island Mall event. SIGC will receive a percentage of Barnes & Noble’s proceeds for the 12/7 business day. We were asked to provide “wrappers” (as opposed to rappers) for the day. We have received a check for close to $250.00 for our participation in this partnership. We thank Patrick the Music Guy and Mike the Magician for providing family-friendly entertainment.
Nancy Gonzalez and her team, led this year by Patrick Rafferty (Music Guy) delighted the Hispanic kids from El Centro with a festive and wonderful Christmas party. Patrick and his family donated all the gifts as well as his performing time and talent. This was extremely generous.
We co-sponsored holiday parties for Our Lady of Mount Carmel and St. Adalbert’s schools.
Along with the organized parties, we as a group were called on to fill several S.O.S. orders for Families on the Move, Oakwood Community Church, UAME, New Lane Senior Association, individual families…..it all got done, right up to and including Christmas Eve.
We partnered with New York Cares to send a group of underserved kids from P.S. 185’s Urban Adventures to St. George Theatre to see the Christmas Show. This was truly a first for these kids and they were blown away. They sent us personalized thank you notes and photos and loved every moment.
We “adopted” 15 children recommended to us by Fidelis Care and covered their Christmas wishes.
We donated approximately 200 toys to P.S. 31. Some of these toys were donated by the Marine Corps League, another of our amazing partners.
We collaborated with I.S. 72 to orchestrate three Veterans’ holiday events. We filled 80 hygiene backpacks. We were honored to have several Disabled American Veterans (including our point man, Joe Meizlik) attend our meeting on Wednesday evening and they surprised us with a beautiful plaque from members of the Halloran Memorial Chapter #34, thanking us for support given to our Veterans during the 2019 Christmas Season. Project Kindness, a sub-club of the Coast Guard Sector NY Spouses Club, provided more than 30 requested gifts for one of the Veterans’ events.
Organizations aiding us with supplies were plentiful and generous. YMCA held a toy drive, Gregory Bloomfield and some of you bought new pajamas for us to distribute and just this past week came a huge offering. When I asked in my short meeting reminder message for you to bring along hats, gloves and scarves for Bob Sweeney’s homeless groups, we got a response from Nicole DelPrete from Person Centered Care Services (PCCS) that she had 1,000pounds of hats, gloves and scarves to donate to us to distribute….that’s a half a ton of winter warmth. Bob, Michele and I are making up lists of groups who will take from this mountain of wool. If you have people in need that you oversee and want some of these winter gifts, please let us know.
Cub Scouts Pack 8 hosted a food drive and provided an additional 20 bags of food for our Weekend Food Backpack initiative. These bag were given to families for the extended holiday break.
Shortly after the end of December, I received the annual “renewal” application from Bombas socks which I completed and submitted. We, hopefully, will be gifted with another much-needed, greatly-appreciated bounty of socks.
GUEST SPEAKER
Our guest speaker was Zamir Hassan, President/Founder of HungerVan.org. Mike and I met Zamir on Cabot Cheese’s Community Service Cruise in 2019 and found his innovative program perfect for one of our most targeted initiatives – food depravation and how to attack it. Zamir founded his organization with a simple, easy concept to fill empty stomachs and it has worked and spread now to 33 states and several countries. To be succinct, he asks for at least 6 volunteers for a team. The team, in an assembly line format, fills small plastic bags, then sealed. The bags list the contents (gluten-free, healthy lentils, rice, quinoa, and spices). The bag explains how to make soup/casseroles. One bag provides for ten meals (you add the contents to water and a lot of soup happens). This food is especially useful for soup kitchens. It can be distributed to pantries as well for patrons to mix up themselves. Zamir suggests that the teams of workers (ages 6-96) can repeat and repeat for 12-18 months without expenditure. After that amount of time, the team, if they want to continue, should have formulated a way to pay for the process themselves to continue. It’s almost too easy to believe, but it is working…..clearly at the personal expense (time and money) of Zamir.
Zamir can be contacted as: zamir@hungervan.org. This is a man who single-handedly is putting a huge dent in food depravation. His website is: www.MuslimsAgainstHunger.org.
ENTERING INTO OUR NEW YEAR/NEW DECADE
The Bring Along for our February meeting will be announced….stay tuned.
SIGC MORNING MEETINGS
This information is particularly important to new people just joining SIGC and sorting when, where and what they want to get better acquainted with. In addition to our evening meetings which are the third Wednesday of every month, Michele and Kathy lead Morning Meetings also once a month. The morning meetings are scheduled for Fridays and the exact date is set month to month. This is convenient for mothers tending children or ladies who see a better fit time-wise in the morning. These meetings are at 10 a.m. and take place at Barnes & Noble. The February Morning Meeting will be held on February 14.
NEW GOALS/OBJECTIVES/PROJECT IDEAS AND COMMITMENT
You might remember that I (Evelyn) met with Angela Lesane, Deputy Chief of Staff for Steven Matteo on Tuesday, November 19. Ms. Lesane was exceptional in her guidance and encouragement for us to submit a grant request on January 3, when new monies become available. Fran Iannone, who works on one of Mr. Matteo’s community initiatives (painting fire hydrants) mentioned to me that Mr. Matteo was genuinely interested in the welfare of children so we will be submitting a grant request for the Council Member’s participation in our Weekend Food Backpack Program. As promised, Ms. Lesane was sure to send me the application information right after the New Year began. I began the on-line process but was thwarted early on and had to call on our resident grant helper, Carol Crocitto. I hated to do it as I could see that this was going to be a major undertaking. Carol is tenacious and IF it can be completed correctly, she is the one who can accomplish that. We feel sure that the first attempt at getting NYC Council to notice us will be the most difficult and subsequent applications will then proceed easier. Let’s see what we can do.
Submission of grants will continue to be a big piece of our time/energy; they are necessary as all our initiatives, of course, need to be funded. We have been very fortunate and are most grateful to the monies granted to us to date. We have already found several more to try for this year.
This is a good place to announce a HUGE MONETARY SURPRISE that was consumed at the very end of December (application was made mid-summer). Carmel Mazzola works for The Achelis and Bodman Foundation and it was at Carmel’s suggestion and recommendation that I wrote a Letter of Intent to them requesting grant monies. Would you believe, we were granted $5,000 for our 2020 projects. This was an unbelievable surprise and it is this kind of trust and support that keeps us all headed forward with our mission to help those in need.
We have added P.S. 21 to our Weekend Food Backpack Program thanks to funding from Lynne Persing for this second half of the school year.
Another idea for us all to keep in mind through the year is requests for Matching Funds. After I had the opportunity to speak with my personal doctor, Nicole Arcentales, I thought of a matching funds idea. Dr. Arcentales had just returned from a trip to Morocco and was jolted by the country-wide taboo that keeps women out of the workplace, school and activities due to nature (menses). It brought to a head the idea of supplying sanitary products. Although the stigma is more pronounced in other countries, there is also a need right here in our own community as these products are expensive. Michele concurred and we settled on $250.00 toward this need. Dr. Arcentales MATCHED our amount so we have $500 to purchase and distribute these supplies to several of our most desperate food pantries. Come on….try using your brainstorming skills….let me hear what you can think of, offer, arrange for a matching fund collection.
I personally can’t wait for our February 3 Executive Committee meeting because I hope to introduce several new small fundraising ideas and general SIGC missions/concepts going forward. At that meeting, our group will consider everything said and then, if they agree, we will throw the ideas out to you, our huge, beautiful member ring. We will continue with our tried and true projects such as the Weekend Food Backpack Program for kids, our Family Engagement series which we want to augment with more S.T.E.M. and Art activities; we will continue with our summer swimsuit/towels collections and possibly partner with JCC on a similar program; and we will continue with hygiene/sanitary backpacks for all those needing them. The swimsuit collaboration with JCC is for the Beacon & Cornerstone Program for low income NYCHA residents. I have submitted a request for “help” monies from South Shore Rotary so we can meet the need for 40 swimsuits and 40 towels.
I’m going to be introducing ideas such as “Queen/King for a Day” where seniors at New Lane Senior Association would be taken to a cosmetology school to be used as models for haircuts, manicures, etc. We’ll check into this. Other ideas will include events centered around food, music, and sports (including tennis, bowling, maybe flag football, and horse racing). We invite ALL OF YOU to write down your own suggestions, ideas, comments, complaints for us to put in the mix. When you are ironing, making dinner, daydreaming, remember SIGC missions and think how you can PARTICIPATE.
CONTACT CARD
As I am writing this newsletter, I notice I keep advising you “to contact…..” I’m putting a short list right here which will appear in every newsletter going forward so you can find these contacts quickly. You will note that Michele and my contact info is at the very beginning of each newsletter. Here are other people you should be able to access quickly. Makes yourselves permanent index cards to keep handy.
Kathy Barzal, e-mail: KathySIGC@gmail.com; phone: (917) 648-5279 (Halloween and school collections including Halloween candy collection)
Charlotte Sciarrino, e-mail: marcharl1122@aol.com; phone: (347) 495-8881 (Adopt-a-Pantry; Food Scarcity; Food Pantries)
Ann Rodriguez, e-mail: ann.fiocco1@gmail.com; phone: (917) 797-3666 (Adopt-a-Pantry; Food Scarcity; Food Pantries)
Stacy Berthelon, e-mail: saberthelon@gmail.com ; phone: 347-612-9106 (Morning Meetings)
Margaret Grandstaff, e-mail: mgquilter51@aol.com ; phone: (718) 913-0368 (Lap blankets, UAME, Food)
Rosalind Diaz, Literacy Inc. (LINC), e-mail: rdiaz@lincnyc.org; phone: (917) 697-5783 Reading/Books; Collections; everything Staten Island North Side
NEXT MEETING:
Wednesday, February 19, 2020, 7 p.m. SIGC meeting at the Old Bermuda Inn.
LOOKING FOR….. Attendees at our meetings who haven’t done so already, to stand up and tell us a little about yourself, where your passions lie and what you’d like to see accomplished through your affiliation with the Staten Island Giving Circle. This is particularly important for new people; we want to get to know you and this will also make you feel more comfortable with us as well.
ALWAYS LOOKING FOR USED CELL PHONES AND EYE GLASSESThe cell phones are refurbished to dial only 911 for women living on the streets.
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement.” Golda Meir, former Prime Minister of Israel