Fellow Members ---

As the Bay Area Woodworkers Association we get involved in a number of charitable activities where our members donate their time and skills to helping others in the Bay area -- sometimes, as part of a larger effort such as Rebuilding Together, other times with our own Toy Workshop events. Rebuilding Together is a national nonprofit that rehabilitates homes for low-income homeowners, particularly the elderly and those with disabilities.

This year National Rebuilding Day is April 25th and BAWA members will be participating at 2 local efforts organized by the local Rebuilding Together Peninsula group. We will be helping with some remedial construction work at a mobile home park in Daly City in and a project at a childcare center in Burlingame

We still have room for more volunteers so if you would like to help please contact our Vice President Jay Perrine at perrinedazign@gmail.com .

One of our goals when we were formed in 1982 was to strengthen the woodworking community in the San Francisco Bay area. We achieve this to some extent by our regular monthly meetings. We had a discussion at our recent Board meeting on what our charitable and social goals should be. This was probably the most difficult topic the Board has ever discussed.

We have limited resources and there are potentially so many areas where we can try and help that the Board decide that we have to focus. The discussion covered many areas including:

• a) Run joint educational activates in the Bay area where we invite a recognized expert in the field of woodworking to present a seminar. As well as BAWA members that we would invite students from some of the local woodworking related educational courses to attend at no charge.
• b) Support some underprivileged or educational operation by volunteering our time and our skills by helping them with creating infrastructure to make their life easier; ie: Building jigs or storage areas etc. Our members would provide their time and skills and use some of our BAWA funds to pay for the materials needed.
• c) Just provide financial support to some deserving educational effort.
  
  

The Board decided to form a temporary committee to try and determine our focus in this area. If you have any views or know of any deserving organization we should consider then please let me know.