April 2024

“Change is in the air, as old patterns fall away and new energies are emerging. Consciously release what needs to be released, and welcome with a full embrace the newness you’ve prayed for and so richly deserve.”

—Marianne Williamson

April is here so we are entering into Spring season at Platform.  Usually this time of the year, we have our annual adult leadership program.  But I decided to take a break from running the program or more like, waiting until there is an organic demand for the program.  I am a little burned out from designing programs only to have it fail because of marketing. I guess I am still struggling to understand our audience - where and who is our target audience? I can put a strategy in place once I can narrow the audience. Hopefully, the board and I can explore the question of who and where so we can determine the how.  It is a constant process of figuring out the best means to reach our audience.

Then where does that leave us for the youth program?  The leadership under Dafne has decided to go forward with Activism@Work. As in 2023, we will be offering the youth leadership program on Saturday mornings in September. We will be specifically marketing the program to high school students in the Aurora Public Schools as well as our partner local organizations. It will be a concerted, focused effort to a specific population.  Hopefully, we will have a greater impact and therefore momentum.

We will also offer a short program to train facilitators in August. We learned that our facilitators as well as facilitators-in-training, previous participants of the Activism@Work program, benefit from this training.  We ran a pilot program in May of 2023 in lieu of the cancelled adult program and realized its potential. I am currently writing a training manual for the program which will be published this summer.

As we improve our ability to organize our community and grow our funds through grant proposals and fundraising, Platform is on the cusp of making an impact in our local community.  I can feel the potential momentum coming for our organization. It is just around our neighborhood corner and by golly, it is well deserved and about time.

Sam Joo

CEO and Founder

April 1, 2024