Team Day Nursery makes big showing at Walking for Dreams

If you were near the downtown Indianapolis canal on Sunday afternoon, it wasn’t hard to tell that something big was going on. Team Day Nursery (74 members strong!) joined with over 20 other area not for profit organizations to participate in the Walking for Dreams Family and Pet Walk which originated in the basin near Buggs Temple on the north end of the canal. The event, managed by the Sycamore Foundation, was founded in 2004 to pull together local organizations who did not have the manpower or could not afford to do a fundraiser like this on their own.  This was our first time participating in the walk and we were very pleased with the participation from staff and Day Nursery families as well as our supporters from the Day Nursery Auxiliary (thanks to Co-President Joan Lyday and past president Jenny Rosebrock for coming out) and our board of directors. I also had the chance to meet Day Nursery Wiles Center alum Rachel McCaffrey and her mother Beth who works for Mental Health America, another agency participating in the walk.  Rachel will be a freshman at Knightstown High School in the fall.  A special thanks goes out to AGIS and our representative Mollie Bean for underwriting our staff entry fee. The Day Nursery Employee Health & Safety committee is always on the lookout for activities that promote a healthy lifestyle and AGIS has been very supportive of the committee’s efforts. We also appreciate Olivia Roney from Crouching Tigers coming out to walk with us.  Many of our students know her as the instructor of the martial arts class at their center.  Also I wanted to shout out to Erin Slack, Day Nursery’s Human Resources Director and Beth Rodriguez, our Director of Development for their work in making sure this event went off smoothly. Donations from the event will go toward arts programming in the Day Nursery centers.  Pledges are still coming in so I don’t have a final tally on the amount raised but by all accounts, it was a successful event.  Here are a few pictures from my vantage point at the registration table.