2009 STTI Biennial Convention
Well, your Vice President, Pam Herbig, and I attended the 2009 STTI Biennial Convention in Indianapolis this November. It was a wonderful experience and we were able to really see the workings of the international organization and visit the International Headquarters. We will begin to move forward on our new strategic plan for this biennium and really hone in on those items that are important to us as a federal chapter and those items that STTI feels are important. One of the first things we are going to do is rewrite a strategic plan that focuses on the items needed for a Chapter Key award. We will be sharing that with all of you and hopefully at the 2011 Biennium we can receive that honor. Here are some of the initiatives that we are going to tackle and we certainly would like your feedback and suggestions on any of them:
1) We have decided to focus our service and research money on a unified topic and since we are all associated with the federal government, we have chosen “Paws for Patriots” as that project. We discussed this topic at the Region 12 meeting and had several chapters ask to be part of that project. We will be attaching a short video on “Paws for Patriots” to this website as soon as I can.In short, each dog is “adopted” at 9 weeks old and the money donated ($3500.00 per dog) is used to care for and feed the dog until the age of 20 months. Then the animal is placed into the training program to serve our wounded warriors. The dogs can be used as a therapy dog for a center as a whole or given to a single warrior who needs assistance. Either way, it goes directly to supporting our troops. We also have individuals who have done research on these types of animal companions and would like to support their research if possible. So, we are pursuing the idea of a foundation where anyone can donate to the cause. Some of us have decided to forego giving gifts to our friends and donating to the Tau Theta Chapter for the Paws for Patriots service project instead. We will certainly get you more information as that comes to fruition.�
2. We were proud to have Diane Seibert speak at the convention and it gave great exposure to our chapter.
3. We are working on making this website and a new facebook page user friendly so that we can speak more easily and have our chapter meetings in different forums.
4. Finally I would like to ask you to respond if you currently are able to use DCO. Since it looks like that is going to be DoD wide, we may try to use that option for meetings – however, that remains to be seen until we get clearance. But, I would like to know if you have access so that I can pursue this option.
That is it for now and the Tau Theta Board and I wish you a happy Thanksgiving!
– Micki Shafer
