MDRAO Holiday Message

Dear fellow MDRAO members and guests,

First and foremost, we would like to congratulate and commend you on the jobs you have done this year. It has been a very trying and exhausting year, to say the least. Well done!

This year has been a difficult year for the board regarding meetings and board functions. It seems that every time that we feel that the pandemic shows signs of easing up and try to coordinate a meeting, COVID comes back and we need to cancel. We did, however, manage a meeting in London in April and got a lot of work done.

This year we managed to successfully lobby, with help from the Unions and CAMDR, the Ontario Government to have all MDR classed employees included in the Pandemic Pay program. We hope that when potential members ask what they will get for a $30.00 membership that this will be first and foremost on the list of what this Association does for our members along with education and promoting our professional status.

We are getting ready to roll out our 2019 AGM on January 15th. We are a little bit behind in this meeting, bu,t as I said before, COVID has not been too cooperative.

We continue to tweak our new education platform to make it as user friendly as possible. Adam Becker and his team, Nathalie, Michael, and the coordinators have all been working very hard on this, and we thank them.

We also thank our back-office management team for their hard work and dedication through this pandemic. They were working very hard in the background to make us look good and operate efficiently.

Our membership was free for existing members this year, and we are now on an evergreen type membership which runs for one year from the day you purchase your membership and will not be ending in May anymore, unless of course you purchase your membership in May. You will receive notifications when your memberships are due. We are also looking into multi-year memberships as well.

We have also renewed our Not-for-Profit board member course for all our chapter board members and regular members who may like to join our boards in the future. It is a good course to take, and you will learn lots of skills to help you if you want to volunteer for one of our boards or any other boards in your future plans. It is free to take. You can get more information from Jedd at info@mdrao.ca.

As this festive season comes upon us, we urge you to be cautious. Take your necessary steps to ensure both your safety and the safety of your friends, co-workers, and loved ones. We extend to you the very best, safest, and warmest wishes for this holiday season and a very healthy and prosperous and hopefully COVID-free New Year.

Kindest regards,

Jeffrey Phelps
Nathalie Legault
Candia Anderson
Tony Leite
Sara Roberts
Michael Duncan
Pablo Ramero
Megan Bozec