#3 Spring Cleaning in July... and a call for a special volunteer!

Saturday was spring cleaning; slightly delayed! On hand were Janet, Dennis, Paul and Corey Bershers, the Cheryl Niemo family, Dave Swanson, Candi Bowersox, Rick Mullen, Diane Wlezien, Shawn Stahmer and daughters, and John & Jan Cederlund. A special thanks goes out to the Bershers for renting the power washer. Handling the gusher, slicker suit and all, was faithful volunteer Dennis B. Thanks also go out to John for having our leaky water heater repaired. Yeah!! No more wet dry wall in the bathroom!! It was a dirty day for sure, but somebody's got to do it and we got it done! Anybody know the magic for keeping it that way??????????????

Hey somebody out there.... We're looking for one great volunteer to pick up a load of dirty towels once a week and run them up to the laundromat. We'll even supply the coins! There must be someone who doesn't like kids, animals, hay, or office work and still wants to help out the Light Center! Think of it as "Me" time... a good book, a cup of coffee to go, the schlop, schlop, schlop sound of the washers doing there thing... Ahhhh.. Perhaps bunny towels are your calling!!
Call Candi B to answer our plea!
Later!
JC

Day 2 - Wow, we're blogging maniacs!!

Hi Again!
If you didn't read yesterdays Blog, please backtrack and read it first. (It was much better! Ha!)
I know I won't be able to get to this everyday, but I did want to add a hearty THANKS to our new board member, Shawn Stahmer, who helped get the Blog up and running. I really do need all the tech help I can get!! Hopefully we'll have our brand new web site up and running very soon too!
I'll be talking about the kids (a lot!) in weeks to come, but for the moment I just want to also throw out a couple of commercial messages.
First - We are looking to add staff, so please help us spread the word. Preferably, educators or therapists with strong horse or animal backgrounds. We work days, so people with flexible schedules are a good match.
Next - Our duck raffle and coffee sale continues. If you haven't bought a Lucky Duck yet, call 815-923-2613 before July 28!! ( There are cash prizes and lots of pizzas and stuff to give away; grand prize is $1000!) And the Light Center Blend coffee is the BEST; and compared to Starbucks at $22./Lb., we're a real bargain at $15!
Also - We are always looking for good volunteers! Got some time? We've got work! Call us!
Last of all - Our staff is undergoing "staff and program development." What that means is that we're brushing up our skills and our activities to make the Light Center program even better than ever. But with that comes increased hours and increased dedication... This staff, all of them, put in volunteer hours as well as compensated time; it holds down costs and makes for a dedicated team. So needless to say, your support is always critical to our success. Someone at the Green Chimneys Residential Center in New York said, "the pain these kids carry is like a monster inside of them. Our job is to help them tame the monster without hurting them anymore. These kids have been hurt enough." Most of the kids that come to the Light Center are hurt just as much... Your support helps us help them! Ok, the commercials are all over. It's raining right now, ok it's pouring right now, so I'm ought'a here! Have a great night bloggers!
Jan

Light Center's first post!

Hello blog world! This is our first post and a big day in our little corner of the world. As you can see from the posted bio about us, we work with special needs kids... and horses, and donkeys, and goats, and sheep, and ducks, and...well you get the picture. If you're reading this and you've never been to our web site; you can visit us at www.TLCinUnion.org. We are always looking for instructors, volunteers, horse handlers, and the ever popular donor with deep pockets! Just kidding about the deep pockets, but we survive on donor support and do our very best to always make our donors proud of our efforts. The kids we see have learning disabilities, developmental challenges, and behavioral disorders. Many have been the victims of physical or sexual abuse and come from homes where drug and alcohol abuse are the norm. Others have been in juvenile detention or are well on their way. We see about 200 kids a year, and all of them learn far more from the animals than they'll ever learn from us! It rained today so the boys group practiced remembering and following 6 steps to good horse grooming. Despite the rain, the horses look great and the kids had fun. Yesterday, our young gelding, Rhett, left for "camp", or at least that's what we told him! He's actually gone off for some retraining and will hopefully rejoin us in a few months with some greatly improved manners! Tonight we're painting (on a horse) good behaviors on one side and bad behaviors on the other. I'm not sure if the horse will love the activity, but we sure do. Good luck with that one kids! We'll let you know how it went tomorrow! Good night Blog world! See ya tomorrow!