Newsletter for April 2006 Volume 3 - Issue 4 - Page 2

Safety News (continued)
Harold Jones
Recycle News
Sarah and I helped host the state's annual WORKS Recycling Conference in Great Bend this year. It's always a good conference and I always come away feeling like the time spent was worthwhile. This year was especially neat - we were able to give a tour of our recycling facilities to other recycling companies from all over Kansas. They were pretty impressed with our facilities, our staff, our individuals and our program. Being able to show off a little bit made my whole week. Thanks to everyone for making us look good!

Other News
Our tried and true Maintenance Man, Conlee Connelly, is moving on to other pastures during the month of April. I know he will be missed - I hope everyone will join me in wishing him well in his next endeavor. I'd also like to take this opportunity to introduce Tim Fabricus, who will have assumed maintenance duties by the time you're reading this. Tim is a Great Bend native who comes to us with a lot of good, applicable experience - please make him feel welcome when you meet him.

Advocacy/Training/SHC/CE
Amanda Urban/Kimberly Becker
Good news from community employment, an individual was hired on 3/30 to work in housekeeping at Cherry Village. We are all very excited about this opportunity. We also received two more vocational rehabilitation referrals. Kimberly and I attended a SSI/ SSDI management conference to benefit the individuals while achieving goals in community employment. It has been a pleasure working beside Kimberly, and I am so thankful we have her back

The Advocacy groups are going strong. The Venture Crew will have another swim night in April. The Crew also delivered the food donations to the food bank, and received a very nice thank you. The workers at the food bank really appreciated the donations because this time of the year is very slow for them. The auction concession stand was a success the individuals ran the whole thing with very little help! The Aktion club has also been very busy. We participated in the Kiwanis pancake feed. Many of the Kiwanis members were very impressed. I couldn't count the times they said we never had help like this before but we don't know what we would have done with out you!! We worked very hard, and served hundreds of pancakes. It was a good time. We are planning to help hide Easter eggs for the annual Kiwanis Easter egg hunt coming in April. I want to say thank you to Joe Boeley, he came out to our last meeting and spoke of the old time bands. He also played his trombone. The Aktion club has been having regular meetings at the end of each month. If someone has a hobby or anything they would like to present at a meeting please let me know. The TUFF group will have a meeting in April so we can start looking at election material to get ready for the elections.

Circles and relationship class are still in session. Circles will probably be complete by the end of April. The classes have been fun and we have all learned a lot. I plan to teach male and female hygiene class in April.

Day Services
Sarah Krom
Spring spruce up has been the 'name of the game' this month. We have put some production downtime to good use by devoting some time to clean up and painting of the plant and greenhouse areas. Our client facilities crew has been the backbone of these projects. With some guidance from the maintenance staff we have almost completed the painting of the plant. The greenhouse area has been in need of revitalizing and the agency has applied for a grant to be used for that purpose. A representative from that grant committee toured our facilities on March 14th and was very positive in his feedback. In order to be ready if the grant is awarded the crew gutted the area.