President’s Message

Welcome to a new year with the Local Council of Women!

Spring has finally arrived, and our board is busy finalizing plans for the rest of the LCW year. We hope you will add the future events listed in this newsletter to your calendar and plan to join us.

We would like to thank you for paying your 2023 membership dues. We are so glad to have you with us again this year. If you have not paid your dues, we will be accepting payment at our upcoming spring meeting. You can also mail them to our post office box if you find that to be easier.

We have a few updates to share concerning our LCW Board of Directors. As you can see from the listing of the 2023 LCW board in this newsletter, we have welcomed Tana Chapman, Jennifer Johnstone, and Carol Weiss-Kennedy to our team. We would like to thank Nancy Boerner, Sally Hegeman, and Susan Wier for their service as they begin new chapters in their lives. We will recognize our past board members for their service during a new presentation at our 2023 LCW Annual Meeting. Be sure to check our Save the Date newsletter section for all upcoming meeting dates.

We were honored to participate once again in the Women’s History Luncheon this year. We promoted Local Council of Women through our LCW display table, and we are happy to report that numerous attendees signed up to learn more about our wonderful organization. We plan to bring back our newsletter’s member profile section in the fall edition of the newsletter, where we will highlight both new members and members who have been with us for many years. We would like to thank past board member Victoria McClary-Carerra for this great idea. As we continue to highlight members, we will also begin work to increase our membership. Our board has agreed to set up information tables at various events in order to be more visible in the community and help people better understand who we are and what we do. If you would like to help in this tabling capacity, send us an email or let us know at an upcoming meeting to get on the LCW volunteer list. We also have LCW brochures that members can give to friends. These brochures will be available at all upcoming meetings, and we hope you will pick up a couple to pass on to help us strengthen our membership.

As a new member, one might ask – what efforts does LCW support as a voice for community health? We are excited to report that one of the programs we support and have supported from its inception is the IU Health Nurse Family Partnership (NFP). Can you believe they are celebrating five years of impact this year? I recently attended their celebration and wanted to share some of their exciting news with you. Here are a few details from their five-year report:

During the past 5 years IU Health NFP has:

• Served 504 families and has had 124 graduates to date.
• Completed 12,787 home visits
• Expanded to serve Brown County
• Grown to a 7 Nurse team and added a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW)
• Currently supports 160 families NFP continues to find new ways to reach out to new communities. They have been working with HealthNet, El Centro and the Sherwood Oaks Christian Church Hispanic Church, and are looking for other opportunities to network into the Hispanic, refugee, and other communities.

Being able to hire a nurse who also speaks Spanish would be at the top of their wish list. Please share any ideas to help with this request.

You can help support NFP’s Saturday May 13 Diaper Dash. LCW plans to help it financially as well as collect diapers for the event. We would like to ask members please to bring diapers to our April member meeting. A pile of diapers could make for a great LCW photo opportunity!

Thank you for your membership and your continued support of the Local Council of Women. We appreciate your commitment to our mission and to our wonderful community.