Hello friends of the Nick Virgilio Writers House and Haiku Association! First, we want to extend our gratitude to you for supporting us this past year. Just like you, we've been super busy in the whirlwind year that is and was 2021. Whether it's been through participating in our fast-growing literary journal: Haiku in Action, (by reading, submitting, and/or contributing,) or by joining our Monday Night Mindfulness classes, or cooking accessible and nutritious food with us in Art Unboxed, or performing/listening to poetry with us in our open mic reading series - we're grateful to have you be in our budding community.
NVHA has done a whole lot this year, but on a tight budget. We've received a few generous programming grants, most notably from the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, but as far as operational costs go, we could do better. We're largely dependent on small donors - so please know that your donations of any size matter and consider contributing to our Giving Tuesday fundraising campaign, no matter how little or how much you can spare. We wish to expand our programming and operations to provide literacy, education, and other necessities in both Camden and around the world.
We're excited to share two new major donor updates. The first being a previous donor offering a college scholarship/stipend fund for local high school students, (more details on that in our next letter). The second being an anonymous donor promising to match up to $2,000 for donations to NVHA for this Giving Tuesday, which is coming up next week on November, 30th and through the holiday season.
We haven't even begun to talk about our two biggest NVHA news updates for this year. First of all, we're excited to announce that we have a new president elected to run NVHA. Many of you know Robin Palley, an indefatigable organizational leader, non-profit wizard, and all around good human being. Sadly, we say thanks to outgoing president George Vallianos, a dear friend of Nick Virgilio, who fearlessly led us through the construction of the Writers House and so many adversities. If it wasn't for Mr. Vallianos, we wouldn't be where we are today, although we're happy to say that George will be sticking around as a board member for NVHA. For our next newsletter, we will get into more detail with a behind the scenes look at our second biggest update for this year, which we're sure a lot of you are already well aware of... (we'll give you a one-word hint: Anthology.)
