Message from the President, May 2021

GBA Members,

We’ve come to our last newsletter of the 2020-2021 GBA year and what a year it has been! This year was nothing like what I expected it to be, and it certainly presented the GBA leadership with a number of challenges.

Our board and committee chairs rose to meet these challenges. We created a COVID Response Committee to assist members in practicing in a COVID world. We hosted a virtual Holiday Party where we traded book wrapping and live music for at home scavenger hunts and show and tell. Even without that wrapping at the Holiday Party, we were still able to have our Elementary School Book Project. We held every single membership meeting virtually, hearing from a variety of speakers on diverse topics. We held CLEs, trivia, craft night, a Herb Falk Society induction, and diversity training all via Zoom. We created a Long Range Plan to better position the GBA for years to come. We embarked on a fundraising initiative for our 9th Habitat House virtually. The GBA Foundation remained active in giving financial grants and our Awards Committee recognized deserving members. We published our monthly newsletter and expanded our social media presence. We continued to connect this year, even though we couldn’t be together in person.

I want to especially thank our board and committee chairs for all of your hard work this year. None of these events would have been possible without each one of you, and it was an absolute pleasure working with you. I also want to thank Diane Lowe, who is the doer of all things GBA and a trusted advisor for our group. I’m excited about the next wave of GBA leadership, and I know that the GBA will be in good hands next year.

As I said at our last meeting, being your president this year has been one of the highlights of my professional career thus far. I could not have asked for a better group of leaders to work with and a better group of members to serve. Thank you for trusting me with this important role.

If you benefited from any of the programs that the GBA offered this year, I encourage you to consider making a donation to the ninth Habitat House to show your appreciation and thanks: https://give.habitatgreensboro.org/campaign/bar-build-2021/c328465 Help us build something even better next year!

I look forward to seeing you next GBA year, hopefully in person. Until next time, friends! I hope you all have a wonderful summer.

Lisa Arthur