August 10, 2009

Dear YIG Advisors,

I hope you had a wonderful, restful summer.  We’re very excited to begin a new year of YMCA Youth in Government programs, and we’re so glad you’ll be a part of them. It can’t be said enough: Teachers willing to go the extra mile for their students – and teachers actually willing to chaperone trips! – are truly heroes. Your students are lucky.

New this year: The Advisor Handbook will be posted online only. We are following a YMCA of the USA initiative to reduce paper and paperwork. We will send a notebook to you only if you request it. All of the forms are online, and are clearly marked.

There are few major changes this year. There is a small (less than 3%) fee increase, spread over the two different payments. There will be no increase in Hotel/Meals Fees this year. As always, we offer schools the option of collecting the entire conference cost from their students and sending in one check rather than three different checks for Dues, Conference Fee and Hotel/Meals Fee. It’s up to you to determine what works best for your school. As usual, we’re delighted to take individual student payments (collected and sent together by you) or school checks. We provide receipts upon request.

The biggest change this year is the date of the conference: Wednesday, November 18 through Saturday, November 21. This is the week BEFORE Thanksgiving, rather than the week after Thanksgiving. This earlier time gives us better access to hotel rooms, better access to Resource Staff, and helps with the crunch that schools with before-Christmas exams faced under the old schedule.

Second big change – thanks to Operations Director Charles Duncan, we have a new on-line bill submission program called YODA. We are also testing the beta version of a more comprehensive YODA program which will include on-line registration and other options. Several schools have opted to help us test the beta version of YODA, and we thank you for that. All schools, however, must submit all bills via YODA. This will be added to the Premier Delegation requirements. YODA is extremely user-friendly, and advisors can manage it several different ways, depending on your preferred level of involvement with your bills. We will offer several conference calls to walk you through the YODA bill submission process.

I would LOVE to come visit your school! It’s one of the highlights of my job. I am available to come early in the year to do an informational/recruiting meeting; later for a bill brainstorming session; later still for a parliamentary procedure session; and even later still for a parents meeting. Just contact me and we’ll set it up.

If you know of any schools interested in starting Youth in Government programs, please let me know. We’re offering a $500 bonus to any school that helps recruit a new school. This includes new middle schools. In order to qualify for the bonus, the new school must bring a minimum of 10 students to the conference this year. Just contact me with a name and I’ll take it from there, and will let you know if it works out. You can take the bonus off the Hotel/Meals Fee owed by your school.

We are very excited to continue our Middle School Model Legislature this year. This conference will run concurrently with our high school conference, although there will be little mixing of the high school and middle school students. The middle school students will arrive the day after the high school conference begins, and will stay in a hotel dedicated to middle schools. The middle school students will use the legislative chambers when the high school students are at lunch, and
will have separate evening activities.

A few important things this year:
1. ALL BILLS MUST BE SUBMITTED VIA YODA. Any bills that are not submitted as an e-mailed Word document will not be included in the billbook.

2. Additionally, we request that all other forms – candidate profiles, lobbyist forms, etc., be submitted via e-mail. This does not include accounting forms such as Club Registration, Conference Fees and Hotel/Meals Fees forms.

3. All students in leadership roles and all attorneys MUST attend the November 24 training session in Columbia. We’ve moved the training session to Columbia to make it more convenient for everyone. This information was on the leadership application, so all students should be aware of it. Since we have expanded the length of the training session (it’s an all-day session now) it’s not possible to squeeze that amount of training into an after-school session.

Our website is www.scymcayig.org. Most of the forms and paperwork are available for downloading on this site. There is also a chat room for students to use, as well as links to interesting and helpful sites.

This is going to be an exciting year! We’ve got a great staff of volunteers who can’t wait to start working. And if you have any recent YIG graduates who may be interested in serving on Resource Staff, please forward their names to me.

Finally, if there has been any change in the status of your Youth in Government program – new advisors, etc. – please let me know so we can change our contact information.

I look forward to seeing everyone soon!

Sincerely,

Mary Capers Bledsoe

Executive Director

SC YMCA Youth in Government

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