Present: Mary Alice Dowdell, Ginny DeCoste, Sue Busch, Mary Ann LaHive

Epoch Center: Mary Alice went to recite the rosary on Feb 2 – 12 residents participated and some actually could be heard – a great improvement. Next rosary date is March 2^nd at 11 a.m.

Valentine cards made by Commission members were delivered to the Center on Feb 9 for distribution on the 14^th. Birthday card assignments were made – each of us taking 2 months – Mary Alice will contact the OLOS CSC volunteers to fill out the balance of the year.

We will donate items for a spring "gift" - - lipsticks, nail polish, small bottles of cologne, Kleenex, baseball caps and men’s aftershave. These should be "light" scents. We don’t want to ask parish since we are going to ask them to donate for the women’s shelter for Mother’s Day - - toiletries.

Evelyn House: Mary Ann reported that Pat Perry at the house is excited we want to help. There are currently 24 children and about 14 adults, mostly women. Children range in age from very young infants to 15 year olds. Too late for us to do anything for Valentine’s Day but we will ask parish to help with creating Easter baskets for the children, purchase small plants for the mothers and perhaps baseball caps with a small piece of chocolate for the men. Mary Ann will get a better breakdown of the home’s residents’ ages and sex before we ask parish for assistance. Mary Ann will also prepare a notice to be in the Bulletin weekend of Feb 26/27 – collect the 1^st three weeks in March – deliver items to the Evelyn House by March 24^th.

We will also consider: a dessert/coffee evening with residents perhaps some time in April or May – must be during the week since several residents visit family on weekends - - arrive at 7 p.m., serve dessert and beverage; do a "craft" project with adults and a story time with young children; board games with older ones - - our own children welcome – could use assistance from some OLOS teens (a community project perhaps?) – and anyone else interested. We plan to end the evening by 9 p.m.

Red Cross Blood Drive – June 2^nd – Jane Gilmore will be in charge but will need lots of help from Commission and other volunteers – hours are 1 – 7 and we MUST vacate by 7:20 to allow Scout meeting to gather. Jane will return from Florida about April 15 and we will get into high gear shortly after.

We discussed the needs of Donna Prado. Mary Alice has submitted an article to the Bulletin and has circulated a request to the volunteers who offered to work with us on Commission Sunday last Fall but to date has received only one response!

We have one potential new member, referred to us by Patti Keenan (thank you Patti) – Siobhan Murphy – she will join us at our March meeting. It would be very good if we could get some "new blood" in our group – Karen McManus has just taken a leave of absence so we are really down to 4 full time members and two of us work and the other two have many other commitments. Daytime activities or assistance is getting to be almost impossible.

Lois Darr has offered to help with the birthday cards and the coffee/dessert project at Evelyn House. Lois will also try to fit in a visit to Donna Prado.

Next meeting – March 8^th at 7:30 p.m.