Happy New Year! A special thanks.

Grand Crossing Park Neighborhood Network

"...What YOU can do for YOUR Neighborhood"

Dearest Neighbors and Stakeholders,

I'd like to thank all of our associates who made our first Kwanzaa "Imani" Karamu a success last Friday evening, New Year's day. In light of the fact that we seemed to have so much misfortune, including losing our program /memento due to an unfortunate fire in the neighborhood, we still pulled things together enough to have a memorable evening. That's due to our endurant strength as a network of people committed to advocacy and relationships aimed at making a better neighborhood.

All put into perspective, we had our eldest associate who was our first neighborhood volunteer, 99 year old Thelma Lloyd on hand to give us the community blessing to hold the event and almost filled Josephine's banquette room on a cold blustery New Year's day. Success through difficulty. It was a good day.

We are now set for a big year full of elections, a convention, comprehensive community planning and much more. The 2016 Kwanzaa will mark the 50th year of Kwanzaa, our 10th year as an association and Ms. Lloyd's 100th birthday. Talk about the "stars lining up".

Since this is a big year for us, I'm calling on everyone to muster the strength to be proactive in doing what needs to be done throughout this year, for a big year end celebration. We've had 9 years of practice in doing what we do - communicating, pooling resources and showing up for each other. It would be ideal to raise a Kwanzaa committee to complete a comprehensive plan make a special and fitting event for such a special year.

Let's see what we can do.

Yours in fellowship--

Brad O. Redrick,
Chairman