I just thought I would take a moment and thank everyone for helping us with our 2010 United Way Campaign. We had $142,075 dollars in requests for aid. During these hard times and two major fund-raising efforts on Orcas for the Healing Arts Center Roof and the Orcas Food Bank Building, we were fortunate to raise enough funds to disperse over $67,000 dollars via allocated and designated funds. This means we were able to reach approximately 47 percent of the need.

The following agencies on Orcas were helped: Orcas Family Connections, Orcas Island Prevention Partnership (two projects), Orcas Family Health Center, Orcas Island PIP, and Orcas Montessori. For those who are interested in all the agencies and programs which were helped, we will be posting this information on our website. If you have any questions or comments, please post them on our Web site or on Facebook.

The entire board of the United Way of San Juan County would like to send our thanks to everyone who helped. Unfortunately, we cannot print the names of all the angels in our community who helped. We can, however, thank all the local businesses who helped our Can Drive in December 2010. Our thanks go to: The Orcas Village Store, Island Hardware, Ace, RadioShack, Country Corner, and Darvill’s Bookstore. We would like to give special thanks to The Village Stop, who went above and beyond in their efforts to support the Can Drive. They even volunteered to keep a can in their store for additional time!

Lastly, we would like to congratulate our director, Joy Goldberg and her fiancée on the birth of their first baby in January of this year. We hear that both mother and baby are very healthy and all is well. Joy has stepped away from being a director to be a mother for an unspecified period of time. Congratulations! We will keep this community informed as to whether Joy comes back, or if another director will be coming on board.

Dr. Carol Vincent-Hall, ND (Orcas)

President, United Way of San Juan County