Children’s Enrichment Committee

• Volunteer Spotlight – July 2024July 5, 2024

  One of the keys to a successful organization is its leadership. This month, CEC would like to recognize its recent past presidents Kathy Hufcut and Sandra Strohsahl as well as all previous board members. Indeed, their leadership brought CEC to new heights and new outreach.  As a result, the organization has grown and prospered.  

  Under the leadership of Sandra, CEC became a program of DRC which offered a substantial umbrella and opened avenues not previously available to CEC.  As president, Kathy guided the organization to new fundraisers and marketing tools which brought more opportunities to serve others.  

  CEC looks forward to more growth which in turn allows more service to children in need. Thank you Kathy and Sandra for leading CEC on a strong path to follow its mission.

• Volunteer Spotlight – June 2024June 27, 2024

  Financing educational opportunities can be a stressful task, but for foster children and youth in need, the task may seem overwhelming. CEC continues its mission for over 100 years to help those who need it most to finance education with scholarships and grants.

  We would like to sincerely thank Pat Kind and her scholarship committee for the time and effort they put in for this mission.  They not only contact all high schools with applications and information, but review the submissions, verify registrations, make the difficult decisions to select the most deserving students and present award certificates personally.

  Six scholarships in the amount of $1000 each have been awarded this year, as well as four $500 grants to continuing students. The work that Pat and her committee do is highly appreciated.

• Volunteer Spotlight – May 2024May 6, 2024

  Volunteers come in all shapes, sizes, backgrounds and talents.  This month’s spotlight is on the “Behind the Scenes” volunteers who quietly work with few people aware of how much they do.

  Robert Hrabowsky immediately comes to mind as one of these volunteers. Robert loads, unloads, provides transportation (often many miles!) builds, collects and otherwise is constantly available to help CEC.  Building two bed frames and donating all materials was one of his outstanding contributions.

  Robert, along with many others who are often husbands and friends of our members, help out frequently. They make the work that CEC does easier and for that we sincerely thank these helpers.

• April SpotlightApril 22, 2024

  CEC would like to shine this month’s spotlight on DRC Director Donna Ramlow, who retired as of March 31.  Donna has been instrumental in arranging for DRC to provide many of the business aspects necessary to run CEC’s successful program.  Tech support, website services, facility use, mail coordination and non-profit paperwork are but a few of the behind-the-scenes resources that have been offered.

  In addition to orchestrating this valuable support system through DRC, Donna has also volunteered her time by helping with such activities as the CEC holiday gift program too!

  We wish Donna a happy retirement and thank her for her years of service to DRC and its programs.

• Volunteer Spotlight – March 2024February 29, 2024

  The Children’s Enrichment Committee is proud of its history. For over 100 years, we have made it our mission to help children in less fortunate circumstances… specifically foster children.  To look back over the years, we realize that we are connected to the members of past years through our common goal. This connection is maintained by the CEC scrapbook which shows our history by means of photos, news articles and letters. For this, we sincerely thank our dedicated member, Jan Nappo.  Jan has created beautiful scrapbooks of our activities as well as being the curator of past CEC journals. Without her work, our history could be lost and so we sincerely thank her for her diligence and creativity in keeping our history alive.

Read more about our 2021 and beyond activity here on our blog