[wendell-meetinghouse] Wendell Meetinghouse Update

[marianne sundell]

Dear Friends & Neighbors of the Wendell Meetinghouse,

It has been many months since I have updated our members about the work of our non-profit. After about 20 years of lots of volunteering in various capacities for the Wendell community from writing bylaws, warrant articles, & open space plans, to coordinating Meetinghouse benefits, starting the holiday fair & ensuring the town forests have habitat to support grouse, all while single parenting & living through seven years of parental advanced cancer, and more recently the combination of managing major medical issues and needing to move for health related reasons have proved to much for me.  This year I have just needed to rest and focus on taking care of myself and focusing on that has been lovely. 

In the meantime, there is still good news for Friends of the Wendell Meetinghouse and the community at large. Court Dorsey heeded my call for a volunteer to become the new president at the Vision Circle we held in January. After we worked together for a few months to bring him up to speed, he began assembling a fine team of volunteers to carry on with our mission of restoring and re-opening the building. 

This group, which includes a balance of both past active Friends and new volunteers includes nine people willing to serve on the board including volunteers for all the officers positions. Several others have stepped up to assist with more specific tasks. As many of you know Friends of the Wendell Meetinghouse will be the beneficiary of the Wendell Full Moon Coffeehouse this Saturday, so Court and the group will be filling in more details about their plans soon. 

When I got re-involved with FWM while Nan was President the group had been doing some good work raising funds & planned a lovely event, but the youngest active member was about sixty and they had neither a working website or a presence on social media. When it became my turn to serve as the president, addressing these gaps became my top priorities and I am pleased to report that this endeavor was a great success. Several younger folks have stepped up to serve as officers, play supporting roles, and share their talents over the last several years. As I suspected, they were also well equipped to help bring us up to date in cyberspace. 

Looking back, there are so very many people I want to thank for their contributions to the cause while I served as president. Starting with the next generation, I am proud to thank both my kids Lilly, who created our website and even taught me to manage it & Justin who served as treasurer after Gail Krutka needed to step down. Kate Lee was also an amazing help with serving as clerk and producing beautiful newsletters. Laura Morin also served as clerk for several months. For everyone who attended our very first benefit event, Ajika Sawyer clearly stole the show! I am so pleased to learn her family plans to get more involved with FWM. 

My other top priority over my time as president was to combine fundraising with following some advice we were given by Stan Rosenberg and Denise Andrews. They suggested that we needed to find “cultural partners” and demonstrate community support & interest in using the building. With these goals in mind, I coordinated a series of benefit events and so very many amazing talented people stepped up to perform that I am still in awe of the great abundance of creativity in our community. All of this fun we had will provide excellent grant documentation. 

Thank you to all of you with a special shout out to Kellianna, Perry Howarth, and Shelly Hines who each played a big role in coordinating their events. Then there are all the local businesses and artisans who have pitched in raffle prizes year afte year, along with former resident Kuumba Piazza. So many other folks have also pitched in from Tom Chaisson’s amazing price for painting the building, to Adam and Eric’s delicious local feast at our first event, to Doug Smith’s abundant cider one Holiday Fair, to the the Wendell Community Chorus members donation of baked sale goods at our last concert, to Court who relived me of this duty. While I hate to leave anyone out, so very many people have pitched in to help our cause in recent years that I must. 

Its wonderful to see that as the Friends move forward more members of the next generation have continued to volunteer to keep the projecting moving along.  Once again we can look forward to a multigenerational group with a presence in cyberspace and ever abundant well of talent and creativity! Best of luck to the new crew.

Marianne Sundell




Sent from my iPhone