2005 Annual Report

Yearly Report West Cascade Peace Corps Association

August 2004-July 2005

West Cascade Peace Corps Association had 10 monthly potlucks with speakers and programs in the last year. We also participated and supported the Peace Corps Recruiter at the University of Oregon in hosting the NOMINATION party in May, there were about 100 people at the event. The months of January and July bad no activity. Attendance at the monthly meetings was from 20-45 people.

About 40 RPCVs and family marched in the Eugene Celebration in September featuring the International Taxi made of wood featuring sayings from Peace Corps countries we represented.

We as a group volunteered to clean-up at two major fund-raisers for Food For Lane County, an organization set up to help the homeless and needy. We have several other good works in the making.

Two of the group were present in Olympia for a regional RPCV meeting.

We donated funds to support a student in Swaziland where a Peace Corps Volunteer from Eugene is presently serving.

Five newsletters were sent out to the RPCVs in the area in the last year, electronic communication and post cards alerted the group for the months that newsletters were not sent out

A major effort was made to locate RPCVs in the area and we plan to hold a major membership drive offering the constituency incentives to join both the local and national group.

West Cascade has a list of 243 RPCVs in the area (good addresses), and only 40 of them are members of the National Peace Corps Association according to the list recently downloaded. We aim to send a letter out to each of the people on the list and follow up with a phone call and encourage them to join.

A check for $200 will be sent for affiliation fees and a donation since we don't have nearly 200 members, only potential members. Also, we will send a print-out of the RPCVs in our data base, the addresses are good.

Please change the officers in your records to:

Beryl Brinkman. President
Wayne Thompson, Vice President
Lori Matthew, Treasurer
Michael Kresko, Secretary

Board members:

Bhavani Manheim
Moriah Hart
Shannon Kresko
Maggie Keenan
James Cloutier

Penny Moblo. Past President
Sarah Schrock, Peace Corps Recruiter