Hannah's Socks • warm feet, warm hearts

This posting is about a super-sized blessing that is way cool!

Several months ago, Doris submitted a proposal to Leadership Toledo, a nonprofit organization whose mission "is to foster leadership involvement by developing an awareness of community needs and opportunities." Please go to their website - www.leadershiptoledo.org - for more info.

The adult program is for 40-50 business professionals with recognized leadership skills who commit to an all-day meeting each month from September to May. During that time, they learn about community needs and use their expertise to aid volunteer service projects. The Youth Leadership Toledo program trains 50 high school sophomores, each selected because of their leadership potential. Executive Director Dave Schlaudecker is in charge of a great program!

Anyway, ours was one of 29 proposals asking for help from Leadership Toledo.

We were notified that we had made the first cut; we would be one of ten area organizations scheduled to make a presentation to the full group on Tuesday, Oct. 30th. Our Executive Director and resident tech-genius Keith assembled a (naturally!) terrific PowerPoint presentation. Our top arm-twisting fund-raiser Joyce Allen, herself a past L.T. graduate, came over to help create the 15-minute speech that would hopefully convince the group to aid Hannah's Socks for free until spring 2008. (Did I mention that they provide their expertise for free?) Doris and I pulled Hannah out of school for the morning, and off we went to the meeting.

I think God greased our path, because the presentations are timed. Each project has twenty minutes - up to 15 minutes for the speech, and then five minutes, or less, of questions from the L.T. participants. But Dave admitted that he forgot to start the timer when we began at 10:30, so he wasn't certain how long ours was. After we finished, our presentation ending with Hannah softly thanking the group, we took her to school and went home to wait for the results.

At 3:00 PM, we got the good news: Hannah's Socks was selected by Leadership Toledo as one of the six projects that will receive their assistance! They have assigned ten people to work with us, starting next Tuesday, Nov. 6th at our weekly meeting.

I have to tell you all that we were excited to hear from one of the L.T. participants. As we prepared to leave, he caught up to us in the hallway, introduced himself and said, "You WILL be chosen...and I want to work with you. But even if I don't get to be on the team, I want to help you anyway." What an awesome gift! We can't wait! More to come on this exciting development.