October 15th, 2026 Community Meeting notes

• Beth showed us what’s in the kits and how to use them.
• HHS’s Overdose Prevention Team can provide a box that we can put out at our events. They would refill it as needed. These are similar to the OAK (Overdose Aid Kit) boxes in the parks. You can call a number on those boxes if you ever see them empty.
• Mike and Amethyst are going to keep the box and bring it to events.

Amethyst coordinated with Waukesha Resist to include the zines in the totes given away at the No Kings protest. And our logo was on the tote as one of the sponsors!  The zines look great, check them out if you haven’t seen one. We’re planning the next edition for January, so think about any ideas.

We’re having a table at the protest, generally need volunteers 11:30-2:30.

[since this is now in the past, I’ll add that Andrea, Ashley, Robin, Andrew, MJ and Amethyst were there and it was fricking cold]

• Instead of hosting our own community Thanksgiving, we are supporting the Stone Soup project, which has been offering a free Thanksgiving meal the Wednesday before the day for about 25 years.
• Amethyst liaised with Maureen and WMAN is providing the turkeys – we’re using our proceeds from the benefit concert for that. The plan is to wait for Meijer or somewhere to run a sale on turkeys (Andy and Mike and Amethyst can store in freezers). Deadline for getting turkeys is 11/17 to have time to thaw.
• Mike will lead on spatchcocking and brining. We’ll need to figure out where/when to deliver the cooked turkeys. Which will be cooked by:
  Mike and Amethyst (2)
  MJ (1)
  Lindsey and Max (1)
  Ashley (1)
  Andrea (1)
• We also want to do a WMAN friendsgiving potluck on 11/7. We’ll need a host for that.

• Upcoming events

• Brant’s taken charge of this. We need volunteers – Lindsey said she could be there, MJ too.
• Amethyst picked up some supplies ($130 of WMAN funds, got big ziplock bags, AA batteries, hot hands/toes, 6 fire blankets). MJ bringing 16 flashlights and AAA batteries. Lindsey and Max bringing non-clumping kitty litter.
• Desired items: blankets, batteries, flashlights, road flares, small first aid kits, non-clumping kitty litter, gallon zip lock bags

• Kids Impact Community is donating pre-made bags of hats etc., dividing between our event and Stone Soup.
• The kids are also making (and donating) Thanksgiving meal kits we can distribute at the event.
• We need a lead for this event, and volunteers

• We had talked about doing puzzles and games but Andy pointed out December was a rough month for retail and general busyness, so we’re going to do that in January (Ashley had offered to be the lead on that).
• Current plan is to do another hygiene event in December. Andrea is going to work on a resource list for low-cost dental care and can be lead for the event?

• Amethyst and Ashley met with the United Methodist Church. They are excited about hosting events for us, it would be a way to do a consistent time for the monthly food shares since we do Saturdays. They work with the Hope Center, have a great location and have a kitchen we could use. However, they require proof of insurance. Ashley did some preliminary research on what we could get as a grassroots organization and it looks like it runs between $600 and $2000 a year. We need a committee/working group to look into this. And we need more fundraising opportunities to pay for it.
• It would be good to talk about how we’re running the organization and what is/isn’t working.
• Robin has started using Signal groups for different events to coordinate volunteers. We also want to have a lead for each event.