Hello there, this may be one of my final posts as President of Quota International of Massillon, as my term will be ending at the end of this month.  I have enjoyed serving as President these past two years even though it has required a lot of extra hours of my time, but I feel it has been worthwhile and I have grown as a leader.  We will be installing Anna Mavrakis as our President for the 2015-2016 Quota program year on April 15 at our meeting.  She will have an outstanding Quota Board with Holly Maloney moving up to Vice-President, Cindy Ertle moving up to Treasurer and Terrie Baumgartner coming on the Board as Secretary.  Rounding out the Board as Directors will be Jane Shem and Holly Dean remaining for their second year and incoming Directors Dianne Day and Marcie Waltz.  I wish them all the best!  Tonight is our annual Dinner and Benefit Auction at Meyers Lake Ballroom.  We have 249 attending and many beautiful items to auction off.  We hope to make $30,000 from this event to further our mission of We Share to our Western Stark County, Ohio Community.

We are now past the middle of March and had our first 60+ degree day today since I don't know when.  We are getting ready to elect new officers this week, select our Quotarian of the Year, and our Volunteer of the Year.  We have received some exciting news that we will be awarded two more grants for hearing aids for two children in Western Stark County whose family meet the income criteria.  These grants are from the Paul and Carol David Foundation.  They have been very generous in assisting Quota International of Massillon with grand funding in the past few years.  We have also applied for for a grant with the Aultman Foundation that would help set up a hearing assistance lending library for children with hearing loss in our community.  Our Auction is coming up very soon in April and we need everyone to assist with that by attending the auction and by helping with donations or volunteering to work at the auction that evening.  This is a whole club group effort and is not just our committee's responsibility. Have a safe and happy St. Patrick's Day!

Until next time . . . .                 Alison

Well, it is now the month of March and it came in like a lion in NE Ohio where we live.  Hopefully, soon we will be rid of the snow and some signs of spring will appear!  This is the beginning of Quota Cares Month and we are hoping to launch our new service project with Pathway Caring for Children, which provides foster homes for children in need of foster care in our community.  We will be focusing on the teenage foster children with their own duffle bag complete with a pillow, blanket, book, journal, sports ball for the boys, and nail polish, hair accessories for the girls.  
We thank the community for selling out our Princess Tea Party by the 25th of February this year.  The event isn't until May 2!  We are also in full swing for our upcoming Benefit Dinner Auction where we hope to raise $30,000 for our 2015-16 service projects for the speech and hearing impaired and disadvantaged women and children.  We are keeping our Quota member, Dr. Carrie Spangler in our thoughts as she is in Hong Kong this week to present at a conference.  What an honor and experience for her.  We will hope to hear about it when she speaks at our April meeting.

Until the next time . . . . . 
                                                                          Alison

We have been wanting to do this for a while now, but no one had the courage to move forward on it.  We have had a website for a number of years that was faithfully maintained by our loyal Quota member, Anna Mavrakis.  However, technology has come along way in the past few years and our former website just couldn't do as much as we would like to see in this day and age.  Hopefully, our members will be able to look at it on a regular basis and we will get others who might be interested in joining our organization to look at it.

Until next time . . . . . 
                                                                Alison