Director’s Report for July 7, 2010 Board Meeting

The Board of Directors of Mano en Mano | Hand in Hand will meet on Wednesday, July 7, 2010 at 5:30 p.m. at our offices on 51 Main Street in Milbridge, Maine.  Members of the public are welcome and encouraged to attend (public comment time is at the beginning of the meeting).

Here’s my report for the month:

Summer is here and that means we’ll soon be kicking into high-gear for our summer ESL classes through the Department of Education and our construction project which should get under way towards the end of August or early September. It also means that it’s time to review some of the reasons why we are all involved in this important work. I just received the first set of student evaluations of our adult ESL programs which were filled with comments like “I need English for life” and almost unanimously expressed a desire to advance next year with more challenging materials. We’re sending three high school students to the Intensive English Institute next week and awarded our scholarship to a Latino who just graduated from high school. Summer also means that it’s time to plan our programs for the 2010-2011 academic year. Existing programs will be expanding alongside the creation of new ones as we transform Washington County into a place that fully embraces the potential of recent immigrants and migrant workers. It’s an exciting time to be working with Mano en Mano.

It’s also an easier time to be working at Mano en Mano. We are currently undertaking a major upgrade of our Information Technology systems to make our work more effective, efficient (with cost savings), and transparent. Installed systems include: new website and email system with Google Apps installed, wireless networking with internet access, secure network storage with automatic redundancy in the event of failure, and a central office printer accessible from any computer in our office (to increase quality and reduce costs at the same time). The last phase of this process will be the acquisition of an all-in-one office machine (print/fax/scan/email) and additional hardware to secure our data in the event of catastrophic loss.

Thanks for your support of Mano en Mano, visit this website often for updates (which you can subscribe to automatically), and be in touch if you have any comments or concerns!