First Board Meeting plans Fall Schedule

Greenville, South Carolina - Upstate Monarchs held its first separate Board meeting on July 31st at 5 PM at Earth Fare Super Market. The future Board Meetings will be held quarterly and this is an attempt to separate the business portion of the group from the support discussions in Greenville and Anderson. All UM members are invited to attend the Board meetings but only Active Members can vote on issues. For the Fall season starting in August, Community Meetings will be held monthly in the Anderson and Greenville locations. The Greenville meeting will concentrate on the support and informational mission of the group. The Anderson meeting will have a return visit by Jeanne Nourse, who is an Anderson Occupational and Lymphedema Therapist at AnMed Heath Rehab. Members can attend any of these meetings and only need to attend one meeting per month. Check our Meeting Page and calendar pages for the latest times and locations for all the meetings.  "We believe this change will allow us to better serve the communities we want to reach and give better access to members to convene in local areas where they live", said Bobby Clark, President of Upstate Monarchs. "We have been discussing these changes since our very successful launch of the Anderson Community Meeting in March [2013] during National Lymphedema Month. We have made tentative changes and we will observe the reaction with our members and get their feedback". Once we get their feedback gathered, Members will discuss our next action at our next Board meeting in November and take appropriate steps as needed.  Future community meetings in other areas of the upstate are possible. Also out of the July Board meeting, members present discussed the possible constitutional changes for the end of 2013 to formally incorporate Community and Board meetings, and a new format for the Group's business cards was approved to address these changes. We will send minutes of the Board meeting to all members by email in the next few days. Please contact Nancy Brown (at contact@upstatemonarch.org)  or call the group's phone number, (864) 214-6006, to be sure we have your email address on our group listing. In addition, discussions on possible subjects and speaker's schedule for the Community Meetings in Greenville and Anderson were tentatively agreed to by the members. Our August meetings will feature support group discussions with no particular guest speakers. However, we will consider using a central question for Community Meetings each month, and we want all members' feedback. We will let that feedback drive our speaker selections in the Spring season. We are finalizing more specific details for the Fall schedule and we announce more changes on our Speaker's Schedule page in the next few days. Tentative Schedule for the Fall 2013 August 7th - Greenville Meeting, 5 PM - Support Meeting August 13th - Anderson 6 PM Support Discussion with Jeanne Nourse, Occupational and Lymphedma Therapist at AnMed Heath Rehab. September 4, 11  - Community Meetings - "What is Lymphedema?" October 3, 10  - Community Meetings - "What are the latest Treatment options?" November 6  - Guest Speaker - Dr. Denise Crockett who is a PhD Counselor with Greer Therapy and Trauma center. November 13  - Community Meetings - "Review Lighthouse Conference Info" November 20  - UM Board Meeting - Elections & Constitutional Changes December - Holiday Social (to be determined)