by Nicole Belbin, Service Committee Chair
The Fall Service Project marks the Service Committee’s first service project with our newest committee member, Rebecca Valentine, Associate Librarian at UMass Law. She has proven herself an invaluable member of our committee already and John, Stephanie, and I are so happy she joined us. For the Fall 2023 Service Project, the Service Committee chose to highlight the International Institute of New England (IINE) in Boston. They do amazing work supporting refugees and immigrants and have recently seen an unprecedented influx of Haitians into the Boston area. We felt their mission complemented the theme of the Meeting, The Fog of War: International and Foreign Legal Research in Today’s World, nicely. We sponsored a goods drive for members to bring in or purchase items online via their Amazon Wishlist. LLNE members generously donated towels, sheets, toys, and hats, among other items.
We learned a lot about coordinating a goods drive with this project! As luck would have it, IINE had its annual full staff meeting on November 3, the same day as our Fall Meeting. This put a small monkey wrench into coordinating the drop off of donated items to IINE’s office, as none of the Service Committee members were available to deliver the goods another day. The Planning Committee was extremely helpful in storing the items and helping us figure out alternative means of getting the items where they needed to go. Ultimately, Katie Kerekes, Senior Law Library Intern at Northeastern, saved the day. She delivered the items to IINE on November 7.
If you didn’t get a chance to donate an item during the Fall Meeting but would like to support this great organization, they are still in need of winter coats or you can purchase other much-need items from their Amazon Wishlist.
As always, thank you to our members for your continued generosity. The Service Committee is looking forward to offering impactful service opportunities for LLNE members in the New Year.