[C-U Smokefree] Updates and meeting changes

[Scott P Hays]

Greetings from the Prez,

Just a few notes from our meeting Tuesday and information about future meetings - 

Mark your calendars: JUNE 9 6pm; JUNE 17 10am; JUNE 25,26 & 27 all weekend; RESCHEDULE OF JULY 6 MEETING:

>From the meeting, we announced that we now have the financial support of the Illinois Coalition Against Tobacco (ICAT).  They have about eight thousand dollars to spend on our behalf (yes, even MORE than I originally reported) so we need to revisit our strategic plan and consider some immediate needs such as printing, other printed materials, our advertising strategy and the implementation of a public opinion survey.

On that note, we agreed to enlist the support of Dr. Greg Shaw from Illinois Wesleyan University in developing, implementing and analyzing our own survey.  He did the survey from Bloomington, Illinois that received some press lately.  We will most likely staff it with our own volunteers.   We will be forming a survey development group to work with Greg on the design and execution of the survey soon. And we'll be calling on YOU to volunteer!

Also, we have scheduled a meeting for next Wednesday night at 6pm at the Carle Forum in the Gillespie Conference Room to discuss and share information on the costs of various items such as printing, advertising, and creating stickers, magnets or other items for handout at Health Fairs and other events.  All are encouraged to attend! Those who volunteered, please bring cost and pricing information with you to share with the group.  Brian has agreed to bring some alternative logo ideas as well so we can possibly put that to rest.  Others should feel free to attend and bring prices and quotes as well.  We would like prices for a variety of printed materials, premium items, and print advertising, most likely from the News-Gazette.

We also discussed and updated our plans for the WNTD media event we have planned for June 17th at 10 am.  Our guest will be Mike Scanlon, Applebee's owner from Lexington, Kentucky, along with others from our own community to talk about the real economic costs of second-hand smoke.  Look for more details on this very soon. Please PLEASE spread the word as widely as possible!  We would like 40-50 audience members for this event and this may be hard to pull off.  It will be held in the Auditorium of the Champaign Public Library.  This is our first big event, so let's make it a good one.

We will need more people to fill in staffing for our tent display at Taste of Champaign, the weekend of June 25, 26, and 27.  This is a great opportunity to attend the festival and have a good, friendly place to "camp out."  So come out and help out.  We will be emailing or posting a more formal sign up sheet for people to sign in and volunteer soon.

Finally, I hate to say it (sort of) but Carol and I will be going away on vacation from June 22 through July 7.  Yes, this means we won't be able to attend or help out with our "Taste" tent, which is something I was really looking forward to, but these were the only dates that worked for us for the summer, so I'm sorry to disappoint.  

It also means we'll be out of town for the currently scheduled July 6 regular meeting.  I don't mean to overstate my own importance, but I'd like to be there, so we'll try to reschedule that one.  

So, there is lots going on, so keep informed.  And look for more postings on several of the above notes.  Feel free to contact me anytime about anything, and stay informed! My cell phone number is 778-2645 and it's usually close by!

And we'll...
C-U Smokefree!

Scott