Cypress Kenya Trip 2010

Thanks to everyone who participated in the trip prep meeting this past Sunday.  I thought the meeting went exceptionally well.  I am really pleased with the unity, creativity, and motivation within our team.  So, thank you all for that, and thank God for showing up and making that possible.

I’ll warn you ahead of time, this is post is going to read like meeting minutes… just the facts.

Communication

• Several people were not aware of the this blog & the updates.
• Paul will get a link to the blog added to the Cypress site and email everyone again who has expressed an interest in the trip.
• Chris created an online version of the trip application.  Paul will test it and put a link on the blog to it.

Flights

• We still have not finalized flight arrangements.
• The big challenge is that British Airways is the only airline willing to do a group reservation where full payment is not all due up front, but the timing of their flights is not very good.
• Prices have gone up to $2300-$2500 range.
• Jim Gregorich has a contact who will look into flight options.
• Paul will continue to work with Maryanne to finalize flights this week.

Future meetings

• We are going to start meeting every other week.  Polled the group for the best time & day of the week and decided on Thursday evenings at 7 PM.
• Next meeting will be Thursday 3/18 7 PM in conference room of Studio 4:12

Fund Raisers

• We discussed a number of fund raising ideas.
• Set up a PayPal account for people to donate to group fund (Paul)
• Work concessions at a Rays game (Jim)
• Review ABC Fund Raising, scratch & help (Paul)
• Golf tournament (Jim will talk with John Anderson)
• Stimulus concert (Chris)
• T-shirts (Jan)
• Amir is going to write a letter which we can use when contacting organizations about fund raisers.
• The goal is to fully research each of these options by the 3/18 meeting so we can make decisions on them at that time.

For those of you with action items, feel free to post an update here in the comments when you have info to share.  Or if it’s not something you think should be posted publicly yet, email me.

Thanks!