Riding Into Fall With RAFT

By Beth Ann Brown, Communications Team

This was my second year volunteering with the League at Resource Area For Teaching (or RAFT) and, I have to say, they're as impressive as I remember. I really admire them for all they do to make supplies affordable for teachers. We were at the store site in San Jose (as opposed to the Sunnyvale office where the previous DIAD projects were) and actually able to see what they had for sale -- it was quite impressive. 

This year, Valerie Dennis was the DIAD member in charge. The turnout was a total of ten members with four provisionals, four actives, one sustainer and one non-League member. Mary was the RAFT employee helping us and the one who instructed us on our projects for the day. 

We completed four projects: 

• Bagging pipets
• Pricing books
• Bagging buttons
• Pricing stickers 

Unlike previous years, we all got to work together on each project!

Provisional Christine Gibson said she really likes the idea of DIAD projects because it gives her a taste of the community service component of the League. Kristin Barker, also a provisional, thought it was a nice volunteer opportunity for the weekend; it was fun and let her feel like she'd accomplished something. Meaux Costello, our League President, was glad to see the energetic members of the Junior League helping at RAFT and thought it was a great place with fabulous resources. She had a blast her first time volunteering. 

Overall, it wasn't too long of a day but we managed to get a lot accomplished. Everyone left RAFT feeling good about what we'd done to help and happy that the League had chosen to continue with this DIAD project. It was a really fun afternoon and I look forward to going again next year.

Teachers in our Lives

By Valarie Dennis, DIAD Committee

Has a teacher made a difference in your life or the lives of your children? Want to give back to all those teachers that give so much to us? My answer to each of those questions was YES, and that’s why I volunteered to lead the DIAD Resource Area For Teachers (RAFT) event coming up in October. I know that my son and daughter, both teachers in inner-city schools, devote enormous amounts of their personal income to creating meaningful and enriching activities to the students they encounter as the parents don’t have the means to do so. I want to help them in their efforts to give back to an under served community in a time of shrinking state budgets and increasing class size.

If you haven’t heard of RAFT before, they help educators transform the learning experience through "hands-on" education that inspires the joy and discovery of learning. RAFT's products, services and low cost teaching supplies enrich and improve the education of over 600,000 young people each year. RAFT produces innovative "hands-on" teaching idea sheets and packaged activity kits that are created around important concepts in science, technology, engineering and math, as well as reading and art. DIAD volunteers will help them by sorting books, packaging academic kits, and sorting material donations.

If you are a JLPA-MP member and want to join us, save Saturday, October 22 from 1pm to 4pm and look for eNews for more information or go online to the DIAD section of the League website.