YPN Newsletter, December 2011

 

The YPN has had a very busy fall with a wide range of events taking place.  We gave members to opportunity to be more active by hosting a members only tennis tournament, we participated in a soccer league and tournament where we came in 2nd place and we also had a chance to run around the McNab Corn Maze one muddy Friday night.

 

It wasn’t all fun and games though, as we had members continue to learn from within through excellent lunch and learns and business evolution round-table discussions and through a thought provoking seminar hosted by Dr. Patrick Ross on “What Constitutes Being a Professional?”.

 

In other news, Integral hosted a great corporate event where they spoke about generating investment return in a volatile, sideways market.  Stay tuned in the coming months as we reinvent our corporate events into a quarterly corporate-sponsored professional development event.  We are looking to once again have this be our flagship event where members are updated on what has been happening in the last couple months, to network, to learn and for businesses in the community to show their support for our organization.

 

Our fundraising in this quarter has been downright amazing.  Of particular note are:  $7,000 raised for Prostate Cancer Canada through Movember; $5,000 donated by TD Canada Trust at Port Place and $2,000 donated by Mountain Equipment Co-Op for the YPN Community Gardens; $7,000 raised through the Blair McKinnon Celebrity Football Game to go towards Big Brothers Big Sisters and $7,000 to go towards other YPN community projects in the future.

 

To celebrate the holidays, instead of a Christmas party we decided to do a YPN Family Christmas Brunch, complete with gingerbread house making and photos with Santa (thanks Bob Webb)!  The event ended up being well attended by parents, kids and kids-at-heart and I’m sure it will become an annual event.

 

Word has been spreading about our organization and a group of young professionals in the Comox Valley has taken our lead to begin forming a similar group for their area.  Their inaugural event had over 75 young professionals from the Comox Valley attend a networking event along with a brief presentation by yours truly to tell them about what we’ve been doing here in Nanaimo.  We look forward to working with them in the future and to help them through the early stages of their brand new organization.

 

Finally, we are looking at hosting a Vancouver Island wide conference geared towards people under 40 in June of 2012.  This will be a great way for people in our age demographic to tackle and learn about issues that we all may be facing.  Watch for more info to come in early 2012.

 

Congratulations everybody on a successful 2011 and I’m looking forward to see what excitement 2012 will bring. Hope to see you all in the New Year!

 

Sincerely,

 

Leif Bogwald

2011/12 YPN President