I’m a little bit late on the blog this morning. When the alarm went off at 6:30 am, I said to myself, “I just spent a whole weekend working overtime, and I stayed up until 2 am the night before this. The church can stand to have me come in an hour late this morning.” So I reset the alarm and rolled back over. The act was immensely satisfying.

CoCo went very well this time—it excited me to see the six new people on the committee gel and open up to the group. Of course, they couldn’t have done so well without the excellent planning of our “wise old turtle” Melissa McNair and song-leader extraordinaire Maren Haynes, our co-moderators. They both were great about keeping the group on task and using consensus to move things along. They amazingly managed to keep us ahead of the agenda most of the time… my kind of women.

For years our problem on CoCo has been a dearth of young applicants. This means that we end up with a lot of seniors on the committee who drop it when they graduate. This year, however, we have a bumper crop of sophomores involved—five in total. With one first-year as well, half of our committee is comprised of people who will complete their entire terms during their college years. I appreciated the enthusiasm and energy they brought to the meeting. It was kind of weird, though, to realize that one of the members of the committee was my little sister’s age. I felt kind of old when they were talking about not being born yet in 1985.

What did we do? Well, the good news is that after a year and a half of discussion, we finally have a working diversity definition (which may be the topic of a later blog). The committee also did an exciting new design for the brochure—it will be a four-panel brochure that includes our mission commitments and objectives in English, Spanish, and Korean. How they’re going to work this out is beyond me, but that’s why it is Brianne’s project (I loved doing the newsletter and website as the intern, but I hated working on promotional items).

Speaking of the newsletter, the Resources Working Group also decided to revamp it. We’re moving away from a newsletter look and into more of a zine-style layout. Planned articles, written by students, include a discussion about new Supreme Court nominees and two op-eds presenting different opinions on over-the-counter availability of the morning after pill.

We’re also thinking about producing a new NNPCW t-shirt by the end of the year, one that can complement the current “Jesus Loves Feminists” shirts. Our hope is that the shirt will include a quote by either a womanist or mujerista. So send me your favorite Alice Walker quote or the like, and we’ll take the best one and put it on the shirt.

And finally, NNPCW is plotting a new project, one that would involve a scholarship program for NNPCW members. Keep posted here to find out more about it as the project unfolds—I’m really excited to see where we take this one.

“If you offer your food to the hungry, and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday.” --Isaiah 58:10

Kelsey

PS-- Yes, Lindsey is correct about the timing of the V-Day CoCo meeting. And yes, she also remembers correctly about CoCo's part in the early days with The Bogdan. I will forever be indebted to their advice ;).

HA HA HA, i remember the bogdan. HA!