Hello GAFE Families,
We have been busy making plans for GAFE 2009 and are happy to report that GAFE 2009
will take place at Sheraton Hotel in Parsippany, NJ from July 24-26, 2009.
We spent months looking for a new location,
hoping we could find a place that would offer more options to your family if you are making GAFE a part of your family vacation.
However, Sheraton Hotel offered us the best room rates (and let's admit it, they are nice rooms) and much more meeting
space then any other hotel in the tri-state area. As a matter of fact, Susanne Stalker, VP of GAFE, and hotel coordinator,
took her family to visit a hotel in the Hudson Valley area of New York and thought she was stuck at Hotel California!!
She called me panicking! Needless to say, we canceled our appointment with them and she and her family jumped in their
car the next morning and high-tailed it out of there.
We are already talking with new speakers and are eager
to make this GAFE even better than the last. If you have ideas to share with us, please send me an email.
If you were registered for GAFE 2007, you should already be a member of our GAFE Yahoo Group. This forum is set
up for GAFE discussions. For those of you with teens, this might be a perfect way for them to reconnect, or get
to know one another before the event. If you are not able to log in, please send an email to
pagezo@comcast.net Angie will be sure to get you registered.
In 2007 we set up coordinators for each of the major jobs.
It worked great and we had the very best coordinators!! I cannot begin to tell you how hard they worked to make GAFE
2007 the success it was.
Anyway, we need coordinators for 2009. The following positions are open:
Banquet Coordinator - Work with hotel coordinator to set up menu. Responsible for hiring entertainment during banquet
(band, DJ), decorating dining room if needed, ordering favors and scheduling.
Teen Coordinator - set up activities,
forums and speakers for this growing age group.
Volunteer Coordinator - Solicit volunteers and schedule them as
needed by other coordinators. (Registration table, assist with activities, set up tables.....)
If
you are able to be a coordinator and work with the GAFE board and other coordinators in planning 2009, please send me an
email at
nickiwoo@aol.comFinally, for GAFE 2009 to be successful, it will be mandatory for all registrants to volunteer. We have
many things that can be done before the event, during the event and even a couple of things after the event. We have
always tried to make it work without making volunteering mandatory. However, as we grow, so does the list of job duties.
In order to keep our registration costs as low as possible, we do almost everything on our own. Asking each family
to volunteer an hour or two is the only way we can continue without hiring help.
If you own a business and have
access to a copy machine or some other service that could help us to keep costs down, please let me know. We spend
a great deal of money on paper and copies and mailings.
Our web site coordinators are working to get the web
site up to date. Registration will be open the first week of January and hopefully, we will have all of the hiccups
worked out by then.
Remember, all of the families that plan GAFE are volunteers. Please be patient and
understanding with us. Things happen and we have lives and families too!
Hope you can all join us for 2009!!!!
Lisa Pesola
President
GAFE, INC
