Santa Barbara AHEPA Chapter 243

Hello Brothers,

I felt really happy to hear from many of you that the Greek Independence Day celebration was a successful event for our AHEPA chapter and the Greek community in general.

It seems that it was a good program, with a new interesting keynote speaker (Dr. Zacharia), a nice presentation about Haiti from Direct Relief (Anthoula Randopoulos), delicious food prepared by Bill Poulos and nice poems/anthems work by our young members.

I also heard that we raised about $1500-1800 for Haiti, which is a great success taking into account that you also bought 8 copies of Dr. Zacharia's book and got orders for 4 more, that means that you spend $1200 more...So almost $3000 out of your pocket in a day means to me that you responded so generously to the event... And Dr. Zacharia will also donate 20% of her sales to Direct Relief for our cause, which means almost $2000 raised!!!

The success of the event was a result of a good team work, which means to me that we have the talent to do good job in promoting Hellenism, culture etc to our Greek community and locally...

As the Chairman of the event, I want to thank all of you that you really contributed to the event success, by approving the new program, the fundraising cause, spending more money out of the chapter's account, donating for Haiti and being there to support the event.

Please allow me to express my special thanks to:
a. Costas Frangos and George Papazacharioudakis that helped, with their experience, to finalize the program.
Costas Frangos made also all the arrangements with Dr. Zacharia, helped in promoting the event by working on and distributing the press release, and volunteered to be the event MC.
George Papazacharioudakis did all the printing job, saving AHEPA money, and prepared the students of the Greek school to read poems / sing the Greek National anthem.
b. Bill Poulos, Luis Velliotis and Brian Iorio for preparing and serving the food. They probably did more than i know on Sunday...
Bill Poulos did all the food shopping too.
c. Ernest Colendrianos and Greg Pentages for making the arrangements with Anthoula Randopoulos. We got all the help we asked form this wonderful lady..
They also took the responsibility to prepare the Church's hall on Sunday.
d. Chris Compogiannis, Thanasis Batalas and maybe more that i don't know that were in the Church on Sunday morning, early to help in setting up the hall.
e. Those of you who helped cleaning the hall after the event. This is a tough job to stay back and work, when everybody leaves to rest...
f. Jim Brown and Alex Chuchas for providing feedback during the event preparation.
Alex Chuchas, although tired from an overnight voluntary job for AHEPA in L.A. for the marathon, he drove back straight to the church to join in preparing the hall and also participate actively in the celebration.

I want also to thank the Church's ministries (YAL, Philoptochos, VIP and DOP) that happily supported the fundraiser and Helen Ioannidis for having the dance groups performing, although they have their "spring break" through Easter.

Finally i want to thank Fr. Simon for promoting the event every Sunday during the service, doing the celebration invocation and help (together with Valerie Richardson) promoting it also through the Church's publications.

I feel really happy to work with all of you for such a Hellenic event!!!

Best regards

Panos

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Panagiotis Nik. Mitroulias