100 Women Who Care Norfolk

Happy New Year! Another year....another opportunity to seek out local charities who continue to selflessly step up and give back to our community. 100 Women Who Care Norfolk continues to be an amazing group of caring, dedicated and thoughtful ladies. We will operate our February 2021 meeting similar to the November meeting....by email. We have shortened the timeframe but the steps will remain the same. Don’t worry, all you need to do is follow our periodic email instruc...tions. Friendly reminders will be sent out along the way. What is great about this process is that 100% of our members are able to vote and if your charity is selected, you don’t need to give a verbal presentation - a written one will suffice. To kick off 2021, give some thought about a charity to nominate. For your convenience, we have attached the Charity Submission Fact Sheet. If you submitted a charity in November but were not the successful recipient, just let us know if you want your charity submission to stand. There is no need to rewrite/resend any additional paperwork. NOTE: We will still adhere to the local rule that charities who have been successful within the last 3 years, cannot be nominated until after the 3-year mark. For a list of the charities who we have supported in the past, please refer to our website at NOTE: We will still adhere to the local rule that charities who have been successful within the last 3 years, cannot be nominated until after the 3 year mark. For a list of the charities who we have supported in the past, please refer to our website at www.100womenwhocarenorfolk.ca. Thank you for your patience and your continued generosity. Norfolk County charities continue to need our support. If you have any questions, comments or concerns simply reply to this email. FACT: To date, 100 Women Who Care Norfolk has raised $398,000 for 27 local charities. The February meeting will put us well over $400,000.

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year! Check out Tillsonburg’s Country Radio Station 107.3 website on Thursday, December 24th. We are featured on Ryan Daly’s 12 Charities of Christmas! Here is the link https://www.country1073.ca/.... Also, the Simcoe Reformer and the Port Dover Maple Leaf each ran an article recently about our latest donation of $15,600 to Church Out Serving. As we get closer to our February meeting date, we’ll touch base on the process which our meeting will take. It will likely be similar to the November gathering.

Congratulations Ladies! We successfully implemented our COVID Plan. We appreciated everyone’s patience, cooperation and participation. We are pleased to report that 78% of our members voted. Great job by all! IMPORTANT: If we are not able to get together in person in February 2021, we will use this same process (with some improvements). Updates can be found on our website at www.100womenwhocarenorfolk.ca. The successful recipient of $16,000 is Church Out-Serving. Th...ank you to our members who submitted nominations for The Lynn Valley Trail and Purrfect Companions. These 2 charities along with the other submissions which were not one of the three, will be put back in the hat for our February meeting. New submissions are also welcome and will be accepted any time between now and the end of January. Attached are the COVID forms: Charity Submission form and Presentation Form. You can submit the Charity Submission form first followed by the Presentation form. What do I do now? All members (whether you voted or not) - Write a cheque for $100 payable to Church Out Serving. If you had left cheques with us for the winter months, we will use those cheques unless we hear otherwise. All cheques must be received no later than Wednesday, November 25. To make it easy, we have set up various drop off locations throughout the county: Offices of Good, Redden & Klosler There is a secure drop box at the rear of the building. The box is to the FAR LEFT of the main back door on the brick building. Please refer to the email for the home addresses of Beth, Kathy and Jill. OR Email [email protected] and we would be happy to make arrangements to pick up your cheque If you generally pay by CASH, be sure to include your name & address in the envelope Tax Receipts Include with your cheque, a stamped, self-addressed envelope and we will mail out your receipt(s) in December. Or we can make arrangements for pick up or delivery. If you have any questions, please reply to this email. Updates can be found on our website: www.100womenwhocarenorfolk.ca. We’ll be in touch in January. Merry Christmas! Beth, Michelle, Sue and Kathy

First, thank you for your patience, support, and constructive feedback. This is a friendly reminder that you still have time to submit your nomination & presentation for a Norfolk charity. We require charity submissions no later than October 24. The presentation can follow the nomination but needs to be received no later than October 24. If you are not one of the three charities selected, you can use the presentation information at a future time. IMPORTANT: You DO NOT n...eed to present in person. Following the random selection of the 3 charities, the presentation you submit will be emailed to all our members for them to read & vote on (The 3 presentations will be emailed out on October 28). As a reminder, the full process is outlined below. There are so many worthwhile charities in Norfolk which are in desperate need of financial support. Please don’t let this opportunity slip by. Consider nominating one of these charities. There is still time! The templates for the Nomination and the Presentation are attached to the email sent to all members.

As promised, here is the process we will use in place of having an in-person November meeting. Depending on the COVID situation, we may also use this process for the February meeting. At first glance, this looks very complicated and overwhelming. However, we hope you will find it easy to follow, gives you the information you need and will encourage you to submit a charity for consideration. There will be reminder emails along the way to let you know when a deadline is approa...Continue reading

Who can believe we have been dealing with COVID for 7 months! We are so lucky that Norfolk County is doing well. The Co-founders met this past week to discuss what our next steps should be. It is very clear that the need of our local charities is even greater than before as donations to many organizations are down significantly. While we know many of our members continue to support our community with time and money, we have put together a plan for 100 Women Who Care Norfol...k in place of the November in-person meeting. Originally, we thought we could accommodate 2 smaller meetings at our venue, but given the most recent turn of events, this is out of the question. Nor do we think it is safe to congregate inside a building. Therefore, the plan we have decided upon is simple and gives our members a way to participate from the comfort of your home and only requires you to have access to your email account. And no, we are not going to use ZOOM. To get the ball rolling, give some thought to which charity you would like to nominate. Due to our new format, you won’t have to speak in front of our group. Only a written submission is required. NOTE: We will still adhere to the local rule that charities who have been successful within the last 3 years, cannot be nominated until after the 3-year mark. For a list of the charities who we have supported in the past, please refer to our website at www.100womenwhocarenorfolk.ca. We will be sending out an email in the next few days with the details of the new process and the timeline we will be working to. Thank you to everyone for your patience and for your continued generosity. If you have any questions, comments or concerns simply reply to this email. Beth, Michelle, Sue & Kathy

Greetings, Since our last email communication, we have heard from many of our members on how they continue to give back (either financially or through volunteer work) to our outstanding community. We’d like to take this opportunity to share a few of these stories:... Lighthouse Festival Theatre The Theatre has advised us that close to 30 ladies from 100 Women Who Care Norfolk donated over $3000 to their fundraising campaign. As you know, even though the LFT is not able to operate this summer, they have a significant amount of fixed costs which they need to cover. This is a special treasure for Norfolk County, and one we don’t want to loose. Light Up the Stage Fundraiser will continue until the end of September. The McKeil Family Foundation will match all donations up to $100,000. To date, the Theatre has raised $75,000 and fully expects to meet their goal. In case you would still like to donate, here is a link to their website: https://lighthousetheatre.com. We received a very nice email from Caitlin O’Neill thanking our organization for their support. Church Out-Serving Pat Earls volunteered her time and money to support their project of packing up 60+ boxes of food for people of Norfolk County. These boxes went to families, seniors and to the Child Nutrition Network for their Breakfast Program. Even though schools are not open at the moment, Church Out-Serving was asked to take up the Child Nutrition Project and deliver food to the children at home. Church Out-Serving began supporting the Network in March and continued to provide this service through the summer months. As with any endeavor, this program requires many volunteers and donations to make it a success. Indwell Simcoe Project Catherine Wiebe is enjoying following the progress that Indwell is making in Simcoe’s downtown core. The transformation continues to move along very well. She has decided to make her donations to this project. Ensuring the surroundings are weed free At Lynn Cornfield’s condo complex she has been busy weeding the flower beds surrounding 64 units. All of the residents are very fortunate to have people like Lynn taking care of those nasty weeds so the flowers can find their way to the sun. This has been a very rewarding experience for Lynn and we are sure is greatly appreciated by all. If you would like to share a story, please send it along. We would love to continue to stay in contact with everyone until we can safely meet again. Beth, Michelle, Sue & Kathy

The days, weeks and months have marched on and although Canada, Ontario and Norfolk County have faired well during this pandemic, uncertainty remains. As we all must continue to be vigilant, the 100 Women Who Care Norfolk Founders have decided to cancel the August meeting. We believe that many people would not feel comfortable in getting together in larger numbers indoors. We will update you on the November meeting as we get closer to that date. However, we encourage eve...ryone, to choose a charity and donate either financially or with your time. It would be great if you could pass along any volunteer or monetary activity with us so we may share it with the group. There are many in our group who give so much to our community and it would be a welcome communication to share. On that note, Diane Luke recently received the Paul Harris Fellow Award (presented by the Rotary Club of Norfolk Sunrise). Through Diane’s hard work and contact in the community, she was able to secure $10,000 in funding to source the cloth and supplies required to produce face masks. During a time when there was a shortage of masks, Diane and her team of over 200 volunteers were asked to make 5,000 masks. Some of Diane’s other community projects include working on the repair of Robinson and Burt bridges, Board member of the Alzheimer Society, the Lynn Valley Trail Association and of course, an active member of 100 Women Who Care Norfolk. Stay well. We look forward to once again being able to host a meeting in the future, when safe to do so. Beth, Sue, Michelle & Kathy

In spite of us not being able to host a meeting in May, our group of outstanding & caring women continue to step up to help our community. Here are just a few examples: -Working every day in various capacities as essential workers -Sewing thousands of masks for our essential workers and others in the community... -Volunteering at the local food banks -Donating $$ to the local food banks -Donating $$ to Dogwood Suites (New Simcoe Indwell Project) -Donating $$ to the new sanitation equipment for HN -Donating to the Library’s Dolly Parton Imagination Library -Donating $$ to individuals who have lost their jobs -Volunteering at the HELP NORFARMS project (helping farmers feed their field workers) -Looking after our elderly family members and neighbours -Emotionally and financially supporting our own family Our community is home to so many wonderful people, who continue to make a huge difference in so many lives! All the best... Beth, Michelle, Sue & Kathy

We hope this finds all our members and your families well and safe at home in Norfolk County. As we navigate through these challenging times, we wanted to share our current thoughts with you. We have decided to take the responsible action and cancel the May meeting. We are hopeful that the August meeting can proceed as normal, but communication will be sent out towards the end of July with an update. Whether we host a meeting or not, individually, 100+ Women Who Care Norf...olk, will continue to make a difference in our community. Perhaps, you are supporting the Food Bank, Soup Kitchen, Salvation Army or your favourite charity? Maybe there is a friend or a friend of a friend who is in financial stress and you are providing a helping hand to buy groceries or make this month's rent. Sadly, some of us are likely affected with the closure of our place of employment, while others are supporting our community, working unprecedented hours on the front lines. Whether you are able to donate money or time, let’s all consider making May 13th (the date of our next meeting) a day to do An Act of Kindness. Place a call to a friend who you haven’t reached out to recently, leave something on a neighbours doorstep who is unable to get out, send a card with a note of encouragement, donate to someone who has lost their job, rake a neighbour's yard. There are endless ideas. As we all move through these stressful times, worrying about our families, friends and neighbours, please feel free to share your positive stories & pictures. We will attempt to put some of these on our webpage as an inspiration to all. You are an exceptional group of ladies! Even though we won’t be able to formally get together in May, we know that all of you will find a significant way to give back to our community. Thank you for all you have done and are doing! We are.....100 Women Who Care Norfolk!!!