President Report for ONRC meeting April 14, 2018

I would like to thank Louise Coutu, Executive Director, Rob Greenaway, Toronto Central Council President and the Toronto Central Council Executive for hosting this ONRC meeting. I would also like to thank Mike McGinnis and his team from St. Clements Conference for managing the logistics here for the preparation of the meeting.

The Ontario Regional Strategic Plan that was launched last year can be found on the ONRC website under the Members / Meetings and Reports section. I hope that you have identified one new goal to implement within your Council or Conference this year. One of the goals outlined under Bishop Support is to arrange a meeting with your Diocesan Bishop to share information about the works of the Society within the Diocese. It was suggested that the Ontario Region identify which Councils/Conferences belong to each Diocese with the intent that one meeting be arranged with that Bishop. This list has now been created, which involves 10 Diocese bishops. Our Spiritual Advisor, Denise Bondy, will assist Councils/Conferences to have a meeting arranged if this is a goal you have identified. If you are interested, please contact Denise or myself. If you have any questions or wish to discuss the Strategic Plan, please let me know.

As some of you know, Phil Bondy has developed a Succession Planning Workshop to help identify and invite a new leader when a current President's term has come to an end and no one has put their name forward to be President. Phil has already done 16 workshops with great success in having a new President identified, and has another 7 scheduled in the next couple of months. Please reach out to Phil should your term as President be coming to an end this year or your term came to an end before now and no one has stepped forward to take on the role. Phil is happy to travel anywhere in Ontario to conduct this very interactive workshop with your members, and I am confident that you will be happy with the results achieved. I have heard from Past Presidents that it was thanks to Phil's workshop that a new leader was identified and stepped into the President's role.

We know that some Conferences are struggling having very few members and are on what I would call "life support". We have a Rejuvenation Committee who meet via Skype on a regular basis to talk about ways of rejuvenating conferences and councils. I would like to identify these Committee members and ask you to please stand when I call your name. The Committee is chaired by Phil Bondy. Members are Judith Nunn, President of Halton Particular Council; Linda Alexander, member of Halton PC and Vice President of Mary Mother of God Conference; Pat Lenz, President of Brant Particular Council & Omar Ellis, Peel North Particular Council President. We know that prayer is important in everything that we do, and we would like to have a call to prayer to pray for our conferences and for vocations to the Vincentian Family. The prayer is simple and is included on your tables. This prayer will be shared in our next monthly communication sent out. We ask that you pray this prayer at each meeting to help our Conferences who need more members. We will pray this prayer together after my talk.

You will recall that Pope Francis declared a World Day of the Poor for the entire Church to celebrate. This year, the date for the second annual World Day of the Poor is Sunday November 18. National Council is currently working on developing a marketing plan and materials to leverage SSVP on World Day of the Poor. These details will be shared with our members at the National AGA in June. Our hope is that World Day of the Poor will be a day to raise awareness and visibility of our Society and our works, which will help with recruiting members and raising funds, and will also leverage our Conferences and Church celebrations working in partnership with our Churches and priests.

As you are aware, Sarah, our Administrative Assistant, has been working on improving our database by reaching out to collect email and phone contact information for Executive members of Councils and Conferences to improve our communications. She collected the Council information in the fall and winter of 2017, and has been in the process of collecting the Conference executive information by reaching out to the respective Council Presidents since January. This has been a very time consuming project, but also a very important project to help us improve our communications. I would like to thank you for your help in providing us with the requested information. Should you have any questions about this database project, please ask Sarah or me.

At our last meeting, I mentioned that we are enrolled in an Enterprise Car Rental Discount Program where we receive a 10% discount off vehicle rentals. I have since been informed that I was given some wrong information. Our discount is 10% off the National brand, and 5% of the Enterprise brand. Please be sure to use Enterprise Car Rental when renting a car both for Saint Vincent de Paul business and personal use as the more our Society members use Enterprise, the better. Also, a reminder that we receive a 10% discount with Staples on printing.

The Ontario Regional Executive and I want to hear from you if you have any questions or recommendations on what you need from ONRC.

Please reach out to us should you wish someone from the Executive team to attend one of your meetings – Denise to speak about spirituality, Phil to speak on succession planning and/or rejuvenation, Pegg to speak on North of 60, Sue to speak on stores, Corry to speak on social justice & advocacy, Jim to speak on restorative justice, Lil & Sophia to speak on youth recruitment or starting up a Youth Conference, or Terry on financial processes. In addition, Committee Chairs also do presentations - Jere Hartnett on social justice and systemic change, Michelle Jenkinson on First Nations to help in the Moosonee area, and Guido Kelly on twinning. Email contact can be found on the website.

Some upcoming dates to remember - The National AGA this year is in Newfoundland from June 20 – 24. We will have a brief ONRC meeting for our Ontario members who are in attendance on the evening of June 20.

Our fall meeting will be held Sept. 28/29 in Sarnia.

Thank you for all the amazing work you do within your communities to serve the needs of our friends living in poverty. I am truly touched when I see the commitment, dedication and passion of our 5,000 members across Ontario.

Now let us pray together the Prayer for Vocations to the Vincentian Family.