Newsletter :: Spring 2007
From the Vice President's Desk
Daphne Stam here, your friendly neighborhood Vice President. Before I tell you all about the new and exciting things going on with the Durham Mothers Club right now, I hereby extend our warmest heartfelt congratulations to DMC President Amy Garner, who is quite possibly giving birth right at this moment. Talk about things that are new and exciting! I also want to take this opportunity to heap praise on Amy. She is much too modest to say so, but under her efficient, sensible, and gentle-yet-firm leadership, the Durham Mothers Club has grown both by membership and by service, and has become an organization I’m very proud to serve. And as Vice Presidents sometimes do, I’m attempting to fill our president’s large shoes in leading the DMC as we round the bend toward summer.
There was a lot of excitement (and cash!) generated at our recent DMC yard sale! Thanks are due to April Harrison for organizing it. What a perfect example of a member, not an officer, coming forward to serve the club in a very specific way. No one has to be an officer to coordinate a clubwide event! If you have an idea for a clubwide activity, please contact us and we will help you make it happen!
I am also excited to announce a renewed effort to get Mom’s Night Out going again! Our Mom’s Night Out Coordinator, Annette Drury, has been putting out polls on the Yahoo Group to gauge interest in various activities, with great ideas like Spa Night and Wine Tastings. Wouldn’t it be fun to attend something like that with a mom or two from your playgroup? The more the merrier… and hopefully existing camaraderie can break the ice for moms that might attend without anyone they already know. Look for Yahoo Group announcements soon on our first MNO of the summer, currently scheduled for Friday May 25th.
Our Service Projects Coordinator, Nicole Roman, has been busy giving us the opportunity to serve the community. Besides donating $172 to the Durham Rescue Mission, we collected canned goods during two recent clubwide events. Nicole will also be collecting items for care packages to send to troops overseas, with postal costs to be covered by the DMC. Keep watching for more opportunities to get involved with our community!
We’re also gearing up for new Club Playdates, organized by Special Events Coordinator Karen Triplett. Coming up soon is a Strawberry Picking playdate… as with everything the club offers, we hope you can come out and join us!
Have a safe, happy, and fun-filled summer… and of course… Happy Mother’s Day!
—Daphne Stam, DMC Vice President
DMC by the Numbers
231: DMC’s current membership. Our group size has nearly doubled just in the past couple of years!
50: The approximate number of playgroups that Susana Ramsey coordinates for all of us. Remember, if you’re interested in joining or starting a playgroup, or if for whatever reason you feel you need to change your playgroup situation, please contact her. And thanks, Susana, for keeping us all connected!
1: The number of membership drives the DMC has per year. We add new members all year long, but we’ve now switched to doing all renewals in January. If you’ve stopped receiving e-mails from the Yahoo Group, it’s probably because we think your dues have lapsed. If that’s something you need to fix, please contact Kathy Holt. And thanks, Kathy, for the tremendous amount of work it takes to keep our database up to date!
172: The number of dollars the club recently donated to the Durham Rescue Mission to help replenish their food stores after a recent storehouse fire.
18: The number of officers and coordinators that head up the DMC. We all serve in various and often multiple ways on a completely volunteer basis. In the spirit of Mother’s Day, I wholeheartedly thank everyone that keeps us active serving the needs of the club and others in the community.
0: The number of overseeing organizations that moderate our activities and that can claim a share in our success. We are run by our moms for our moms, which gives us an extraordinarily unique opportunity to make our mothers club whatever we want it to be! I am a member of another mothers club, and whenever administrative problems arise, I almost always come back to recommending the way the DMC does things. I feel we’ve really done right in doing it ourselves!
Are you current?
Have you moved, changed your phone number, changed your email address, had more babies, or all of the above since you joined DMC? Then we need your new information to keep our directory current! Contact Kathy Holt, Membership Coordinator at membership@durham-mothers-club.org or 698-7144 to update your information. This makes it easier for us to plan programs, structure playgroups, and help you with renewal when the time comes. You can also update via a form on the website, www.durham-mothers-club.org. Thanks!
Do you Yahoo?
If you’re not a part of our DMC Yahoo mailing list, you’re not getting your dues worth out of your club! We post all event information including changes and cancellations, and members ask questions and exchange information on all kinds of topics from finding a good plumber to finding a way to get the baby to sleep. It’s truly a wealth of information, and it’s for DMC members only. If you’re not in, email Valerie Parham Thompson at Valerie@tortugatech.org for an invite!