Member News

ASSISTANCE LEAGUE OF CHARLOTTE HOSTS PHILANTHROPY LUNCHEON

Assistance League of Charlotte will host a Philanthropy Luncheon on Wednesday, April 21, 2010 at the Covenant Presbyterian Church Fellowship Hall, located at 1000 E. Morehead St., Charlotte, NC, from 11:30 a.m. until 12:30 p.m.

The luncheon will be an opportunity to introduce the community to Assistance League and the philanthropic programs member volunteers implement and fund. Those programs include Operation School Bell, Operation Check Hunger, Mecklenburg County Teen Court, Assistance League Scholarship Fund, and Assistance League Outreach.

Honorary Chair for this event will be Former Charlotte Mayor, Pat McCrory. Others speaking at this event will be a family member of a child who has benefited from the Operation School Bell program and a judge and Teen Court member from the Mecklenburg County Teen Court philanthropic program.

For more information, contact:
Barbara Kopald, 704-543-1299, CHEFBGK@aol.com

The 2010 East of the Mississippi Networking Conference will be held March 15 - 17 at Assistance League Center. Assistance League Member Volunteers from chapters east of the Mississippi will be joining us for three days of sharing ideas to help make our chapters even more dynamic. Ann Salenger, Assistance League Historian will be a guest speaker. Jeff Elder (formerly of the Charlotte Observer) will be speaking on "Social Media for Non-Profits." Jeff spent a year in Silicon Valley studying social networking at Stanford University, visiting Twitter and Facebook and meeting the companies' leaders. He will inform us on how we, as a non-profit, can use social media for our benefit.

Assistance League of Charlotte's OperationBookbag donates bookbags filled with grade appropriate school supplies to the American Red Cross, Greater Carolinas Chapter Disaster Center for distribution to local school children. Often, when a family is displaced because of a fire or other disaster, children lose their school supplies. When a Red Cross volunteer hears that a child is involved, a bookbag is pulled from inventory and hand delivered to the child. Having these filled bookbags helps a child continue with school work and allows parents to attend to other essential details. Along with needed school supplies of notebooks, pencils, and crayons; some other supplies are glue sticks, scissors, tissues, hand sanitizer and zippered baggies.
Rick Schou, Director of Emergency Services for the Greater Carolinas Chapter quoted "We're so thankful to have partner agencies like Assistance League of Charlotte. These packs are going to help local children return to a semblance of normalcy after being uprooted from their homes."
The first delivery of 300 bookbags delivered to the Red Cross filled the back of a Ford Explorer. To date, Assistance League of Charlotte's Operation Bookbag has provided over 1,000 bookbags to the children in Charlotte-Mecklenburg. The partnering of Assistance League of Charlotte and the Red Cross can be a reminder of a part of history approximately 100 years ago. In 1894, Los Angeles society ladies started a small charity called Assistance League. Assistance League Founder Anne Banning started the Los Angeles Red Cross in 1917 and served as Director when America entered the war in Europe. Anne Banning would be proud of Operation Bookbag and Assistance League of Charlotte.

Pictured from L-R:  Red Cross Volunteer Jim Sheely,  Operation Bookbag Chm. Laura Royster, AL President Renee Reese,  and Red Cross volunteer Berkley Godehn.