National Board Meeting - January 2007

Your Grace, Esteemed members of the National Board, I extend my wishes to you for a very happy, healthy and glorious New Year. With the grace of God, may 2007 bring our Philoptochos Society many new and wonderful successes, and may our philanthropic outreach achieve new and extraordinary proportions.

The New Year begins with the significant occasion of the celebration of Epiphany, the feast of Christ’s baptism.

The Holy Spirit comes in the form of a dove to anoint the Messiah. Upon our baptism, the seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit, along with Christ, comes to dwell in the innermost shrine of our hearts. It is this abiding presence of the Holy Spirit in us that makes it possible for the continuous, progressive and personal growth of a Christian into the image and likeness of God. The gifts of the Holy Spirit bestowed upon us at our baptism are love, joy, peace, happiness, goodness and gentleness. It is these gifts that enable us to participate in contemporary life as an Orthodox Christian, allowing all that we do to evolve from love, love of God, love of one another. As our Lord was sent out to conduct His public ministry, we also have a responsibility, a responsibility to promote the ministry of philanthropy.

I would like to focus this meeting, and my comments, on my primary objective for the next two years, as I described it to you at our first National Board meeting in October. As you remember, my objective is to continue to grow our Philoptochos Society, as we build upon the foundation that we have already established. The most important component of success in accomplishing this objective is to continue to develop our overall leadership capabilities.

Well-known authorities on the subject of leadership provide an appropriate summary of the role of leaders who are willing to assume the mantel of creating a future legacy by taking the following actions: challenging the process of what "has been" with a new norm focused on reflection, development and continuous improvement; inspiring and catalyzing a shared vision; and bringing the necessary skills and talent to the board that can be aligned with the vision and the strategic plan of the board.

There are several key ingredients in implementing the leadership principles that I have just described. One such ingredient is the composition of the board itself. There has been a concerted effort to ensure that the National Board and the Executive Board are equitably represented both geographically and numerically, based on each Metropolis membership.

The next area of focus is the continued evolution of the Standing and Special Committees of the National Board. I maintain my goal to continue to achieve greater participation in, more extensive collaboration with, and increased output from, the Standing and Special Committees of the National Board. Reaching this goal will reinforce the complementary and reciprocal roles and responsibilities that each of us shares as a National Board member, and it will encourage greater accountability and results at both the individual contributor and committee levels.

It will also allow for the emphasis on all forms of complete and accurate communication and information distributed and disseminated across our Society. As we continue to adapt and to refine the structure of our Society, we are ensuring that we are coming into closer and better alignment with the goals, objectives and structure of our ministry.

The Standing and Special Committees of the National Board have been evolving toward this goal for the past four years. It is now time to take a significant step forward in ensuring the perpetuation of the vision of our Society as implemented through these committees. Our members represent an extremely capable, innovative and dedicated group of women. A strong and consistent theme throughout our organization on all levels has been one that desires to promote the integration of new members into the fabric of our Philoptochos, who will bring forth new ideas, new stimulation and new motivation, and who will embrace the multi-generational and multi-demographic span of women of our parishes. In keeping with this theme, and after reviewing all of the profiles of the National Board members, I have decided to restructure the committees, so that, in most cases, the previous chairs will now take on a mentoring and guiding role as co-chairs. I have tried to place each member according to their committee choices, as well as taking into account their educational background, professional experience, and Philoptochos and community service. In addition, several new committees have been created to complement the existing committees, which I will describe below.

Under the Membership Committee, we have added four co-chairs that represent the northern, southern, eastern and western parts of the country. The Social Services Committee now features regional representatives from each of the nine Metropolises, who will act as liaisons from the National Board to their respective Metropolises. A new sub-committee to the Social Services Committee has been added, titled Disaster Relief, in order to address the need for the timely and expeditious response in providing assistance to those living in crisis situations because of natural disasters. A Convention Guidelines Committee has been added, as the title states, to create specific guidelines to assist in the running of our National Philoptochos Biennial Convention. A National Office Volunteers Committee has been created to assist in meeting the many needs of the National Office.

Our previous chairs have done exemplary work over the past four years, and we look to them for their continued support and guidance, as we evolve and grow in a progressive and flexible fashion. With their leadership, we began the strategic planning process for the future growth of our Society. This process included the creation and the adoption of our mission statements, the setting of goals, the defining of objectives to achieve these goals, and the beginning of the implementation of the action plans to achieve these goals.

Given the accomplishments of our Philoptochos Society over the past four years, in terms of expanding our scope and our outreach, and in terms of streamlining our operations to become both more effective and more efficient, it is now necessary to take a checkpoint to allow us to review and to evaluate the progress of our committees. It is my desire to infuse each committee with a renewed sense of purpose and enthusiasm, so that the new composition of each committee will be enabled to achieve an elevated level of accomplishment.

The mission statements express our vision for each committee. As such, these mission statements need to be reviewed and evaluated in the context of today’s requirements. In addition, the specific goals, objectives, schedule and action plan that are the statement of what we have to do to achieve this vision also need to be reviewed and evaluated.

Below is an overview of the responsibilities of each committee. Each committee is to be a true working committee, which will:

Contribute pertinent and accurate information

Provide sources of specialized and relevant education to share with the National Board members and local Chapters

Create and establish the goals and objectives required to realize the mission statement

Create and establish the action plan to meet the above goals and objectives

Implement and execute the above action plan

The chairman of each committee should:

Schedule either a series of ongoing face-to-face meetings or teleconferencing meetings

Ensure that these meetings occur on a regular basis

Ensure that an appropriate agenda exists for the planning and implementation of the work activities of the committee

Ensure that appropriate participation takes place

Ensure that minutes of each meeting are taken and appropriately distributed

Each committee will submit a report and a policy statement to the National Board for review, approval and implementation. This report and policy statement will include:

A collection of ideas and general information

A determination of goals and objectives

The action or strategy plan to meet the goals and objectives which could include scheduled events to coincide with the monthly commitments

A process of implementation

It is my objective that the work of the committees will begin today at our meeting. As you know, today’s agenda will include committee break out sessions to allow for the preparation of the report and policy statements of the committees to the National Board. It is my further objective to begin actual implementation of the action plans of each committee as soon as possible following this meeting.

As I have previously stated, I have personally reviewed each National Board member’s profile, and I would like to briefly summarize the three categories of your responses: goals to be accomplished in the next two years, ideas to further the mission of Philoptochos, and suggestions for the overall improvement of our Society. Under the goals category, the most prevalent themes were increasing our membership to include younger members, more PR across all of the levels of our Society, having a more visual "hands-on" policy among National, the Metropolises and the Chapters, in order to allow the Chapters to feel more connected to National and the Metropolises, and establishing more Social Services programs. Under furthering the mission category, the most prevalent themes were, once again, PR that is visible outside our communities, the implementation of a formal marketing strategy to increase membership, and developing more "hands-on" projects, so that younger women and other church organizations can participate in them. Under the suggestions category, the most prevalent themes were to have newer and younger members take charge more often, to put a temporary hold on the addition of new commitments, to create more PR for non-Greek Orthodox communities, to increase the use of list servers and emails for the dissemination of correspondence, and to establish a calendar of meeting dates and locations for our meetings. A detailed listing of these responses is in your packets. It is my hope that you will incorporate this information into your committee breakout sessions.

These committees and their objectives should be viewed as an incredible opportunity to grow and to be of greater impact as an organization. These committees will be a driving force at the Chapter, Metropolis and National level, as they will promote the leadership and direction for the implementation of the vision of our future Philoptochos Society.

In closing, I would like to share this wonderful quote taken from Lessons From the Geese, a lay sermon written by Dr. Robert McNeish, an Associate Superintendent of the Baltimore Public Schools. The Lessons in its entirety has been made available to you in your packets.

"It is indeed a reward, a challenge and a privilege to be a contributing member of a team."

I would like to express my love, my heartfelt appreciation and my gratitude to the Executive and National Boards, to our Spiritual Advisor His Grace Bishop Andonios, to Helen Lavorata, our Director, and to the staff of the National Office, for supporting me in the quest to establish a team that will create astounding successes and accomplishments for our dynamic force of philanthropy, the Greek Orthodox Ladies Philoptochos Society.