2nd Annual ACYO Leadership Conference

On February 19-20^th, ACYO members from all three regions gathered for our Annual ACYO Leadership Conference in Fresno, CA. With roughly 45 members in attendance, the main focus for the weekend were resource management and fundraising, which are two key objectives in all ACYO chapters. Some topics that these professionals from World Vision conducted during the lectures and workshops were:

   -    What motivates donors 

• Personal Investment Sheets
• Social Networking
• What makes fundraising fun
• Creating budgets

During the course of the workshops, chapters broke down into groups and created advertisement collages and a special commercial with the tools they learned from the various lectures. With the educational information that was taught from these professional speakers, we are confident that these ACYO chapters will be able to successfully fundraise for future events, as well as create new, inventive ways for advertising. The ACYO-WD Central Council was very pleased with the turnout for the Leadership Conference, and hope that it will only get better in the future.  

Respectfully submitted, 

Liana Grigorians

St. Mary's Manti Night

On Saturday February 6^th, St Mary’s ACYO sponsored an evening of food and fun, Manti Night. Our very own members, along with some helpful parent volunteers prepared the manti the week before the event took place. Along with hand-made manti, guests enjoyed spending time with family and friends. With about 140 adults and youth that came out to support ACYO, the event was completely sold out, making Manti Night an amazing first fundraiser to start off the year. The first Manti night for St. Mary’s ACYO was a great success, and will hopefully be remembered and repeated for the years to come. 

Burbank Christmas/New Year's Party

The event began with an encouraging speech from Fr. Khajag. Through his speech we where reminded the true meaning and the significance of celebrating Christmas. Shortly after, we began to play games that where successful in making the atmosphere warmer and bringing the guests together. We played musical chairs but instead of sitting when the music stopped the contestants where told to retrieve a specific object, the last person to come back was disqualified. Some others games where the best dancing couple, mummy game, and bobbing for apples. The night was followed by dancing and more bonding. Some guests included members from St. Gregory's Pasadena chapter and St. Mary's Costa Mesa. The main purpose of this even was to strengthen the friendship between the members and motivate others to join ACYO. The event was a success and we are hoping for it to be even bigger and better next year. We are really thankful to the bakeries that donated food and everyone that came and helped us benefit from this event.

Anna Arakelyan

Burbank Chairlady

St. Mary, Yettem "Lock-In"

To start off the fiscal ACYO-WD year, Central Council held their first meeting/retreat up at Hye Camp in Dunlap, California. After a long, effective meeting we joined St. Mary Yettem ACYO for their first winter lock-in, co-hosted with St. Gregory Fowler and St. Paul Fresno. With about 30-40 members in attendance from various ACYO groups, we gathered and enjoyed fellowship the entire evening. The youth spent time watching Der Vartan's educational Etchmiadzin video, enjoying great food made by the parents, playing different games, such as Uno and Mafia, and watching movies throughout the night. The following morning, we participated in St. Mary Yettem's Badarak and fellowship following. With Der Vartan's blessing, St. Mary Yettem has decided to make this an annual Winter Lock-in event, open to all ACYO chapters to participate in. Let's all take the effort to participate next year and make it a successful event!

Liana Grigorians
Central Council Publicity Director