On Dec 21st, 2018, The East Cobb Branch of AYLUS held a year-end party. The agenda covered 3 events: 1st, The new leadership of the branch; 2nd, Chorus practice; 3rd, a White elephant gift exchange.
In the beginning, branch president Raymond Jiang gave a speech to all members, he discussed the motto of AYLUS, which is “selflessly serving the community with passion, knowledge and skill”, what the branch was doing, and how proud he was of our branch for its accomplishments in such short time. In the past 6 months, the branch contributed over 800 volunteer hours to the community, including musical performance at 7 local senior centers, school year tutoring to K-8th students, fighting hunger with food packing, and other services to local schools and charity organizations. As the 1st president and founder, Raymond Jiang had been serving the branch since its founding, of which he had a major role in. Even as he stepped down, he said that he would keep serving the community with the branch, and he encouraged members to build up community service as part of their personality.
Michael Fu is the successor and the new president of the branch. He had also been with the branch since the beginning, and as vice president, the biggest contributions he made is to elaborate our mission to more students. In the past year, he convinced and recruited many new members to the branch. In his inauguration address, Michael discussed how he planned to continue with AYLUS, explaining how he planned to be more active and make the branch even better.
Vice president Susanna Huang also had prepared a speech, she talked about how well the group was doing. She mentioned how despite the growing pressures of everyday life, members still contributed a lot of time to the group. In the speech, she spoke to motivate the members and help give them guidance to continue to do well in the branch. She had participated in most of the events the branch held, which allowed her know the time required by the organization. As an individual member, Susanna contributed the most volunteer hours. She is very active in coordinating volunteer events and proactively communicates with the institutions which need community service.
Vice president Cynthia Ruan told us that she is very proud of being a member of the branch. She expressed how she wanted each member to also take leadership and socialize with those in the community. In addition to this, she also encouraged members to put the effort they put into branch activities into their lives. After she joined the team, she became very involved in the events through convincing/recruiting members to participate in musical performance and summer lunch packing program. She also worked with other members in communicating with senior centers, shared her experience in coordination of the branch to other members, and became the star member at senior centers.
Susanna Huang and Cynthia Ruan were promoted to vice presidency in September 2018, as their capacity of leadership, innovation, and understanding was already that of a vice president. They also had already been conducting much of what a vice president would do.
Newly elected secretary Maxwell Jiang also told members that he is be proud of being a member of the branch. He would like to assist the president, vice-president, other executives, and the members as well. He will take care of volunteer hours statistics, event summaries, report editing, and much more. He was promoted as he contributed 2nd most volunteer hours as an individual member and attended the most of branch hosted events. This includes our newest program, the East Cobb Youth Tutoring and older ones such as the East Cobb Young Musicians.
The other officers than stated how proud they were about the branch and some things the members should be doing.
Once all the executives had finished their speeches, everyone practiced caroling Silent Night and We Wish You a Merry Christmas for the next day’s performance. This performance would be special as almost the entire branch would be involved for the caroling. After a few tries, the group caroled nearly perfectly and were ready for the next day.
After the singing, a white Christmas gift exchange was held. In this white Christmas, trivia questions were asked to determine the order in which people would select a gift. Many gifts were exchanged and everyone that participated left being happier. After this white Christmas, the meeting ended, and everyone left with more knowledge on the branch and happiness.
Reported by: Maxwell Jiang
Maxwell Jiang (Secretary), Cynthia Ruan (Vice President), Michael Fu (President), Howard Hua (Public Relation Officer), Keven Shen (Public Relation Officer), Susanna Huang (Vice President)