MPIWI Giving Back

A thank you from Soles4Souls

Soles4Soles has a simple mission: To impact as many lives as possible with a gift of shoes.

Stan's — Fit For Your Feet would like to take this opportunity to thank you personally for joining us during our Share-A-Pair Shoe Drive by collecting shoes on behalf of Soles4Souls. It is only because of compassionate people like yourself that we were able to collect footwear to help those in need. Through the combined efforts of many people, 25,000 pairs of shoes were collected this year!!

A portion of the shoes collected will be given to Repairers of the Breach, a local not-for-profit organization, helping people in need of a fresh start. Soles4Souls will distribute the shoes you donated to the people of Haiti and Chile and other victims of disaster and those living in poverty.

So once again, thank you for your kindness.

Sincerely,

— Jim Sajdak, President

2009-10 MPI-WI Community Outreach theme:
“The Children are our Future…”

In addition to the successful Operation Homefront initiative in October, our chapter’s community outreach focus for this year will be on different ways of helping and caring for children all over the state. This overall theme came together after the first planning meeting of the year. According to Community Outreach Chair, Sue Lidstrom, “we received various wonderful suggestions. The Outreach team was excited to discover that several members of our chapter are personally involved with some of these great organizations that benefit children, so it was an easy decision for us to make!”

Next opportunity to help: We are asking all members to bring new, unwrapped toys to our Midwest Regional Conference at Monona Terrace in Madison on November 12th. These toys will be picked up by Mrs. Claus herself! (MPI-WI Member Patricia Kemner) She will distribute them at the Children’s Hospital near Wausau in December. Patricia volunteers her time to do this each year!

Watch for more details on future Community Outreach projects:

• December 10th Holiday Event at the Abbey Resort: Make-A-Wish Foundation
• January 8th Chapter Meeting at Quality Inn Madison: Big Brothers/Big Sisters
• March 18th Chapter Meeting at Radisson Milwaukee/West: Camp Hope
• May 13th Spring Education Day at Marriott Madison West: Ronald McDonald House

Reaching Out for Community Outreach
2008-09 - A Year in Review

First of all, I’m so pleased to introduce a new web page for our chapter’s website! This past MPI calendar year has been one for the records as far as all we’ve accomplished both as a professional chapter, and for Community Outreach! What makes this even more meaningful is we did this during one of the most tumultuous times in our nation’s economy. I’m filled to the brim with pride in our chapter, its members, and each one of you that helped set the example on the importance of giving back or paying it forward!

Team Lead Sue Lidstrom-Hyatt Place Madison is surrounded by some of the Community Outreach "Angels"! (Top left to right: Sue Zimmerman, Board Liaison Alison Huber - Wisconsin Association of School Boards, Wanda Gilles-WPS Insurance, Amanda Bauer-Concourse Hotel, and Jen Hallett-Snow & Ice Management Association. Team members not pictured: Ronny Hill-American Express Corporate Meeting Solutions, Annette Konicek-Weir Minerals, Tracey Bockhop-Madison Marriott West, and Kim Jones-Meetings & Incentives)

June 2008 Golf Outing: Because our outing event took place in the hard-hit area of Wisconsin Dells for flooding and damage, our Board, along with the support of the chapter members, made the decision to donate all of our outing monies to the Red Cross Flood Relief. Paulette Heney, CMM presented a check of $7,183 from our chapter!

September Awards Gala in Sheboygan: Carin Tran, CMP with the Gala committee organized a food drive and spent hours putting together beautiful arrangements for the tables for our “green theme”. The next day, I delivered 151 items of food to a local food pantry in Sheboygan, while Outreach committee member Amanda Bauer donated the plants to Rocky Knoll nursing home.

October Chapter Meeting in Tomah: We had a wonderful speaker from the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge. We raised the minimum $100 from a wonderful raffle gift basket donated by the Cranberry Country Inn, and what committee member Sue Zimmerman needed for MPI-WI to purchase the FIRST, personalized brick for the “Walkway to the Refuge” – opening Fall 2010! http://www.fws.gov/midwest/necedah/

November Education Day, Milwaukee: Our focus was Organ Donation. This included a very touching Agenda interview with Wanda Gilles & Amanda Bauer, whose loved ones passed & were organ donors. We also had over 30 signatures on our “Orange Dot” board that committee member Jen Hallett made to show your pride & support in becoming organ donors!

M.O.M.’s Distribution Center Manager, Kim Grafenauer, with clothes donated by MPI members! January Chapter Meeting, Middleton: We had a “Career Clothing Drive for Middleton Outreach Ministry, resulting in over 108 POUNDS of donated clothing from all of YOU!

March Chapter Meeting, Neenah. Gloria Nelson graciously helped our committee arrange a speaker from the Friends of the Fox to present us with information about the re-opening of the Fox River Navigational Lock System. www.friendsofthefoxriver.org

April Chapter Meeting: our very first, “MPI Pink Ribbon Day” to bring more awareness to Breast Cancer Prevention. Committee member Ronny Hill organized a beautiful information board and provided our members with a ton of helpful information on prevention. Kudos to the Four Seasons Resort for serving us a pink dessert, pink lemonade on our afternoon break, and participating in “Capsules for Hope” for every opened bottle of Sutter Home Wine at our reception that evening. We raised $128 from a special gift basket raffle, donated by the Hotel Sierra in Green Bay that was divided equally between Wisconsin Breast Cancer Coalition: www.standupandspeakout.org and to the Breast Cancer Recovery Foundation: www.bcrecovery.org.

If you have an idea for a future Community Outreach project, please feel free to e-mail your suggestions to me at smlidstrom@hotmail.com

Thank you!
Sue