Community Involvement Eagle Award winner 2001 Drive for Life

Chapter Contact: Tom Dewitt
Phone Number (309) 766-6186

1. Describe your BEST PRACTICE/HIGH POINT:

   In September & October of 2001, the Bloomington Chapter had our First Annual "Drive for Life". We collected coats, hats, mittens and scarves for the needy in our community. We also collected school supplies, diapers and personal hygiene products for people who couldn’t afford them. We ran the Drive for Life for a month, and had the final collections during International Credit Week. Each Credit Union had huge containers for coats, and we collected them once a week.

2. What made it a HIGH POINT or PEAK EXPERIENCE:

   We found out how caring and giving our members are. We ended up with a total of 1100 + coats, and bags of the other items. We also had a local dry cleaning business that donated all of their services. The manager did all of our coats on his own time in the evenings, and he has new twins and a terminally ill wife at home. This was the ultimate dedication to a wonderful cause in our eyes!

3. What POSITIVE IMPACT did it have for the participants and the Chapter?

We did onsite advertising with one of our local radio stations. There were 4 live remotes at different credit unions in our chapter. Not only did we get to talk about the Drive for Life for 2 hours every week, but we also got to talk to our community about what each our individual credit unions had to offer, and let them know what we do and what Credit Unions stand for. The smaller Credit Unions they couldn’t have live remotes got to talk about their Credit Unions during one of the broadcasts. We all got to tell a little bit about each of our Credit Unions.