A few good volunteers

As we mentioned in the Mid-Year Report a few weeks ago, the Board has been busy, and we expect to be even busier over the next eighteen months, now that we have a Strategic Plan in place.

Over the last year a number of our members have volunteered to serve on committees and write for our blog, and with our new Strategic Plan in place, with dozens of action items, we need even more volunteers!

As your intrepid blogger, I can always use a short commentary from a member about the challenges and triumphs of living with XLH (or especially about parenting an XLH child), similar to the pieces written by volunteers SJ Hunter, Jennifer West, Rachael Jones, and Andrew Shortall.

We also hope to do more fundraising in the future, so we can ensure the organization's sustainability and make our communities aware of the ways XLH affects people they know and love. The fundraising committee could use some support, and not just financially! If you are interested in organizing an event in your local community, let one of us know, so we can send you our fundraising guidelines.

As we grow, we'll be having a presence at more events in various parts of the country to educate the medical/dental community. Sending multiple Board members to those events to represent the organization can be costly, and doesn't fully take advantage of the skills and knowledge of our members, so we'll be looking for members who live near events to assist at them. Most of the dates and locations aren't determined yet, but if you'd be interested in assisting a Board Member in a booth at a medical conference, let us know, and indicate the general geographic area that's within a commuting distance for you.

Finally, we have a couple initiatives in the works for improving members' social interaction, so we can meet each other in person; we'll need a handful of volunteers to help with those efforts. We're currently forming a committee to organize these events, and we'll be announcing another social-interaction project soon, both of which will require several volunteers to supplement the work the Board can do.

I know we have some wonderful, knowledgeable and skilled members. If any of you can spare just a few hours every so often, or perhaps a few days a year, for the Network, please let me know (gin.jones at xlhnetwork.org). Together, we can do great things.