President's Message

AEYC of WNY Annual Report for 2009-2010

It is my honor and privilege to submit the annual report on behalf of the board. Despite the fact that we are 100% volunteer, we manage to get a lot accomplished for our members and the community. How many of these events did you attend?

 PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

This committee started out with a bang, hosting their first event last July. Stacie Ricioppo engaged her small group of participants with the session Getting Families on Board: Helping Them Navigate from Screenings to Services.

Over 200 early childhood providers attended AEYC’s professional development events this year. Westminster hosted Moving and Shaking with Sharon Krull in October. This workshop had the participants wiggling, shaking and learning about the connections between movement, brain research and child development.

Dedicated early childhood educators fought bad weather in February to attend Positive Parent Partnership with Todd Mohrmann at Villa Maria College. Todd worked the participants through several role plays to help us see the customer service side of parent relationships.

In May Growing Up Wild was held at Niagara University. Participants received materials regarding science and nature education and engaged in several activities to use in our classrooms. We look forward to next year’s events.

WEEK OF THE YOUNG CHILD

On April 1st through April 30th, we celebrated our 6th Annual Week of the Young Child Art Exhibit at The Buffalo Science Museum. The show featured artwork by two hundred young artists from twenty- two participating Early Childhood Programs & schools throughout Western New York.

April 14th, opening night, was a resounding success with over two hundred young children and families in attendance.  The children and families toured the art gallery as well as the featured science exhibit: Sesame Street Presents: The Body. 

Thank you to everyone who helped make this year the most successful event to date. And we look forward to the 7th Annual Week of the Young Child Art Exhibit in 2011!

FINANCE COMMITTEE

Our financial position is strong. We rely on our portion of membership dues and profits from our local events to support our work and maintain a balanced budget.
 
We moved the investments to the local firm Mollot & Hardy. They have suggested we find a more conservative approach to how we invest our money. Their suggestions have been carefully considered by the finance committee, and their suggestions were approved by the board in May.

MEMBERSHIP

Our current membership averages around 420. This includes regular, comprehensive and student membership.

We held one open membership meeting on 2/18/10 at HSBC Family Center. A total of 20 people participated in the free membership event, “Documentation around the center: Providing families authentic information on children’s learning through narrative displays and project documentation.”

The membership committee planned a student membership drive at area colleges and hosted membership tables at local conferences (AEYC Fall & DAL).

They met with graphic designers to redesign brochure. The new design is in the final stages and will be ready to print soon

COMMUNICATIONS
In our effort to go green, as well as to meet the technology expectations of members, we have started a shift to electronic editions of the aeyc newsletters. Two of our four newsletters went digital this year. We plan to continue this format for next year, and are investigating different options for digital editions.

Our website saw its 5,000th hit this year! We continue to expand and update the website, and we encourage members to visit for the latest news and information on aeycwny.org.

A shift to a new webhosting service has allowed us to save money on our hosting and domain services. In addition, we’ve been able to expand the aeyc email options to include contact emails for many of our committee chairs- allowing our membership more opportunity for contact and collaboration with aeyc committees!

RECOGNITION AND SCHOLARSHIPS

This year we sent 2 students to the NYS AEYC conference in Verona through the Lillian Brandt Scholarship. The awardees were Heather Sheppard from the University at Buffalo and Jenna Dombrowski from Villa Maria College. You can read about their experiences in this newsletter.

Also, we awarded 2 monetary scholarships to students Jessica Carbone enrolled at Canisius College and Amanda Buscaglia enrolled at Buffalo State College. Congratulations to all the scholarship winners this year.

 CONCLUSION

This work would not happen without the time and effort of an amazing group of individuals. This includes not only our board members, but the committee members that help along the way and the members that come to our events. Next year the board will move to a new format under the direction of our new president, Tracy Touris. We are working on new speaker formats, a few social events and exciting new themes. Please continue to read our newsletters, visit our website and follow us on facebook for more information. Let us know how we can meet your needs. It will truly be an interesting year.