Sunday, 8 January 2017

Team Communication #12

Greeting Final Leg Team Members!

It’s starting to get real!  We just finished packing up all of the Final Leg Team uniforms in Wisconsin where the temperature hovered around the 0 degrees F (-19 C) most of the time we were there.  The only thing we were missing was some open water to get a quick Polar Plunge in!!!

A big shout out to Will Enterprises, an International LETR Executive Council “Preferred Vendor” who not only did a remarkable job with the embellishment (embroidery) of the Final Leg uniforms but also helping to get everything packed and shipped.   Also, a big THANK YOU to Don Stuart, Tory Rivers and Lisa Smith who all did a phenomenal job of putting the uniform kits together and double checking each and every one to insure that you will receive exactly the sizes that you ordered.  The uniforms for the Final Leg Team members from the U.S. and Canada will ship directly to them this coming week.  All of the uniform kits for team members outside of the U.S. and Canada will be distributed upon your arrival in Bregenz on March 8th.   We had to do this due to the extreme cost of shipping outside of the U.S. and Canada.
  
The Schladming Splash is really heating up..…pun intended!  Our unified fund raising efforts are now almost at $90,000 USD led by Sheri Lucas from British Columbia with over $7600 raised, followed by Special Olympics Maryland athlete Michael Heup with over $7300 raised so far!  


To date, there are 12 team members who will be getting genuine, limited edition, Final Leg torches for reaching the $2500 incentive level, and a number of other team members quickly approaching that fundraising threshold to earn a torch!  These torches are not available any other way!  



Many of our team members have found how easy it is to solicit donations utilizing your personal on-line fundraising page that we set up for every team member.  If you have any questions on your fundraising page your Team Leader can help you.  If you take “off-line” donations (cash or check) you can send those donation to Victoria Rivers at SOI (address below) and when she receives them, she will credit your on-line fundraising page to show those donations.  Please make sure any checks are made out to “Special Olympics.” 

Ms. Victoria Rivers
Special Olympics, Inc.
1133 19th Street, NW
Washington, DC  20036

Remember, in the U.S., all donations to Special Olympics are tax deductible to the full extent of the law!

I hope everyone had the chance to look over the Event Guide that we published on-line on New Year’s Eve.  There is a lot of great information in there that will help prepare you for the Final Leg event!

I told you in my last communication that we would be producing a “Team Guide” that will have even more information in it that will provide further guidance and answer some other lingering questions you may have about the Final Leg in more detail.  THANKS to Scott Whyte, this document is now available for your reading pleasure on the Final Leg website in the password protected “Team Zone” area. 


Both the main page of the Final Leg website and the private area for team members only, the "Team Zone," have been updated and enhanced.  Please visit these areas. To get to the "Team Zone" go to the Final Leg website at www.letr-finalleg.org and when the page comes up, hover your mouse over "Home" and a drop down menu will appear.  Click on "Team Zone" in the drop down menu. Remember the Team Zone is for Team members only and is password protected.  The password is 0627.  PLEASE do not share this password!


The Event Guide is a public document and the Team Guide IS NOT A PUBLIC DOCUMENT and must not be shared with anyone outside of the Final Leg team!   This document has all of the information in the Event Guide plus many more details of our event such as specific locations of our hotel stays, team member personal contact information and much more that is not public information.  I would suggest that after reviewing this document, any remaining questions that you may have had about the event will be answered.

The momentum and excitement continues to build and March 8th, your arrival in Bregenz, Austria for the start of the Final Leg, will be here before you know it!  Team Leaders will be scheduling conference calls with their team members in the near future to continue building your teams identity, esprit de corp and discussing the Final Leg event as we prepare to embark on our important mission of creating excitement for the World Winter Games and awareness for Special Olympics all over Austria.

I am excited by all of the posts I see on Facebook by our Team members about the Final Leg and also the profiles of our Team members that we have been posting on the International LETR Executive Council Facebook page.  Keep up the great work of building the excitement!

All the best;

John     


John Newnan
Team Captain
2017 Austria Final Leg

Team Communication #11

Dear Final Leg Team Members;

Happy New Years Eve!  I hope this e-mail finds everyone well and you are all ready to ring in the New Year! 

It's exactly 67 days before the Final Leg team is on the ground in Austria and ready to create excitement for the Games and spread awareness for Special Olympics and I know that you are all anxious to know a little more about the Final Leg event and everything we have planned.  The 2017 Austria Final Leg Event Guide is now ready for your download on the Final Leg website at www.letr-finalleg.org

Please feel free to share this 2017 Austria Final Leg Event Guide with anyone and everyone!  The Guide is in a .pdf format and it is indexed so you can go directly to a specific section of interest to you.  When you are in the table of contents, hover over a section title and then click on it, it will take you directly to that section.  To return to the table of contents hover over the Final Leg logo or Special Olympics logo at the top of the page and click on that and you will be taken directly back to the table of contents.

The Final Leg Event Guide contains information about; the Final Leg event, the 2017 Special Olympics World Winter Games in Austria, the Law Enforcement Torch Run, Special Olympics, Team members & profiles, Final Leg Routes, Ceremony locations, law enforcement & athlete speaking assignments for ceremonies and much more!   In Final Legs past, many team members have printed out the section with the Torch Runner profiles, brought it with them and had their teammates sign it as a keepsake. You might want to consider doing this.

There will also be a Team Guide provided in the very near future just for Team members that contains a bit more information about some specifics that should not be public such as contact information for each team member so you can continue to communicate with one another post event.  This Team Guide will also have specific hotel locations and other team movements that we do not want publicly shared as safety and security is always first and foremost in everything that we do.  There are no security or safety concerns on our Final Leg event but as law enforcement officers we always do our due diligence in that regard with everything we do, wherever we are.  

Both the main page of the Final Leg website and the private area for team members only, the "Team Zone" has been updated and enhanced.  Please visit these areas.  Remember the Team Zone is for Team members only and is password protected.  The password is 0627.  PLEASE do not share this password!

A big THANK YOU goes out to Adi Reiter and Markus Gloessl and the rest of the Austria Logistic crew for all their hard work planning each and every run, ceremony, etc.  This has been a major piece of work that has been in progress for well over a year.  The routes and runs are amazing! 

I also like to send a big shout out and THANK YOU to Scott Whyte, our website and logistics guru, a Torch Run volunteer who also wears the hat of International Law Enforcement Torch Run Executive Council Chair.  Scott has worked tirelessly putting not only this Guide together but also our Operations Manual, the website and so much more.  This is no easy task and Scott certainly had the "patience of Job" as changes kept coming in (the nature of a Final Leg event!) while completing this monumental tasks. 

In this New Year and as we endeavor to create awareness and make a lasting impression on the great people of Austria and all those all around the world about our unified efforts to benefit Special Olympics, I would like you to think about this. "Never underestimate the power of a small group of people to change the world."  In fact, that is the only way the world has ever changed!  Each of those small groups had one person who inspired them.  My "one" person was a Special Olympics athlete by the name of Billy Church that I met 37 years ago as a young rookie police officer.  Think about that "one" person who inspired you.  In the New Year, I challenge each of you to be that "one" person who inspires another to help propel our Law Enforcement Torch Run movement forward into the future.

We are the Torch Run, Mighty, Mighty, Torch Run........

All the best;

John


John Newnan
Team Captain

2017 Austria Final Leg