Chinese New Years is around the corner and PUYO Execs and Board of Directors wants to wish all of you a very Happy Chinese New Years! Cheers to the Year of the Dragon!
Here are PUYO’s upcoming events and highlights:

Drinks for a Better World: Chinese New Year Party (Hosted by Wokai)

Date & Time: January 27, 2012 @ 07:00 PM
Venue: Centre for Social Innovation
Address: 215 Spadina Avenue (Robertson Bldg, beside Dark Horse Coffee), Suite 120
Contact: toronto@wokai.org
Ticket Price: $15 online; $20 at door (cash or credit)

Join us for our first-ever global chapter celebration event (Boston, Toronto and Washington D.C.) as we ring in the Year of the Dragon by bringing prosperity and good fortune to our microloan borrowers in rural China.

Event Highlights:
· Interactive Q&A session with Wokai Co-Founder and CEO, Casey Wilson
· Video link-in with Boston and Washington DC chapter celebrations
· Special screening of the Wokai documentary ‘Mushroom after Rain’
· Sneak preview of Wokai’s new site, scheduled to be launched next month
· Learn how to write Chinese Calligraphy “Duilian” or “Fai Chun” greetings for our borrowers

About Wokai:
Wokai (我 開) which means “I Start” in Chinese, is a non-profit organization committed to ending poverty in China, one loan at a time. More than 300 million Chinese live on less than $1 a day. Rather than simply relying on handouts, Wokai is committed to helping people in rural China lift themselves out of poverty through the power of microloans and empowering Chinese entrepreneurs to start small businesses. To date, Wokai has successfully raised over $400,000 in microloans to change the lives of over 600 borrowers from Sichuan and Inner Mongolia regions of China. Wokai’s global chapter network currently spans across over 15 cities including New York, San Francisco, London, Toronto, Hong Kong and Beijing. Chapters aim to organize fundraising and community outreach initiatives to help grow the awareness of microfinance and the need for it in rural China. The Wokai Toronto Chapter was established in March 2010 and currently consists of thirty volunteer members.

E3 Challenge: Event Partners

A leadership development project under Power Unit Youth Organization, E3 Challenge was created to fulfill PUYO’s mission of promoting entrepreneurship, empowerment, and excellence in youth. E3 is now looking for event partners! If you have contacts to companies who would work with E3 to create business challenges and tap into the minds of youths, email Maggie at maggie.cheung@power-unit.org. For more information please visit the E3 Website.

Annual Planning is NEXT SATURDAY!
This big date is drawing closer! Remember to mark off your calendars for PUYO’s Annual Planning Presentation Meeting on January 28th, 2012 if you would like to hear about our new ideas for our 3 projects. Location TBD. For those who want to contribute ideas, please make sure to talk to your team leads!

PUYO Orientation!
We will be having another orientation in February where we’ll be accepting new members! Spread the word, get your friends hyped and stay tuned!

Call for Nomination!

Ontario Medal for Young Volunteers is calling for nominations! This award is presented by the Government of Ontario in recognition for exceptional community involvement and volunteer work. To be eligible, you must reside in Ontario and be between 15 to 24 years of age. The deadline for nominations for 2011 is on January 31st 2012 so there is not a lot of time. Please keep the deadline in mind as you must obtain 2 other testimonials/references for the nomination. If you are interested in this award, please send a resume and a brief description of your volunteer activities to Steven Tong at steventong88@gmail.com.

PUYO will be nominating a maximum of 4 candidates from the pool of interested individuals which would be most competitive. For more information please visit their website.

Happy New Years, PUYO-ers!
We wish everyone the very best this year, and we look forward to seeing all of you very soon!
Here are some events and updates in the upcoming months.

Annual Planning
The team members, leads, and chairpersons of our 3 projects (Night It Up!, E3 Challenge, Paint-A-Thon) have been very busy squeezing every bit of their creative juices and hashing out all the details to bring to everyone their plans for the projects this year! The big day of presentations, idea exchange, discussion and conversations will take place on Saturday January 28th at Markham Civic Center! Interested in joining in on the action? Talk to your team leads and chairs to contribute your ideas to the projects!

Orientation
Since we had a very successful New Members Orientation in November, PUYO is having another orientation in early February! If you missed it last time, or if you know of friends who are interested in joining PUYO, spread the word and bring them to the orientation! Stay tuned for more details to follow.

Paint-A-Thon Recruitment!

If you are interested in getting involved in a project that is unique and has only been done by PUYO in Toronto, then Paint-A-Thon is the perfect project for you!

The goals of Paint-A-Thon are:
* To agglomerate youth development, empowerment, philanthropy and arts into a single project.
* To raise funds for a worthy cause.
* To train 80 volunteers in project management and execution.
* To provide opportunities for social awareness via artistic expression.

Check us out on our Facebook Page and our Website and you’ll know why our project chairpersons are so passionate about this project. This project is young and has a lot of room for creativity!

The teams currently recruiting members are: Promo, Sales, VRT and Logistics!
Please sign-up with Doly at doly.begum@power-unit.org and get involved with one of the coolest project yet!

Sandwich Run, because we care

With the help of 29 volunteers, PUYO made over 90 sandwich bags and delivered these to the hands of the less fortunate and to the homeless downtown through partnership with Project417! In additions to making these sandwiches (which more than half of them were done in less than 25 minutes!), we also baked over 200+ cookies for Yonge Street Mission! The cookie shapes became more creative as we made more batches, from circle to triangle, from snowman to pacman and finally to a BIG heart! Indeed, PUYOers have a big heart for the community! Check out the photos on our Facebook page!

Celebration Party, because we enjoy each other’s company

After an entire day of making and delivering sandwiches, PUYOers still can’t get enough of each other! All dressed in style, our celebration party at Mirage drew over 60 people! Performances by Blue Street Lights, Kenneth Yeung, Maybe Refuge, magician Edwin Lam, K*WHY and our very own PUYO Rockband turned up the heat in the house! Next to partying in style, we haven’t forgotten to give back! Our ‘Share the Warmth’ socks drive collected over 50 pairs of socks to donate to Project417!

Special thanks to Kester Ng, our VP, who made this entire event happened as well as the Christmas Event Planning Team (Jenny S, Ruby H, Kyle T, Cheryl N, Sam H, Cindy T, Kevin N, Sam Y, Rosana Z, Agnes W.) Thanks to Melissa H., Stephanie Z. and Alan W. for lending their hands the day of for the party and the drivers (Anita K., Ivan L., Kester N., Jay C., Daven W.) for the sandwich run. None of this would have happened without all your help!!

Any comments/feedback are welcomed! Simply email Cherry (cherry.cheng@power-unit.org).

Volunteer opportunity:

Joe from Project417, whom we worked with closely for the Sandwich Run, is looking for volunteers to help this Thursday with the Christmas Dinner the Salvation Army is doing for the Regent Park Community.

They need help setting up, hosting and cleaning afterwards. If you can help in any way please contact Sarah Jackson at sarah.jackson07@gmail.com.