Reflecting & Renewing In 2024 ~ Voice Of The Township
At the start of this New Year we, at the Wayne Township Trustee Office, look back at what we have accomplished over the last year and ahead at the progress we hope to continue in 2024.
In 2023, along with our daily work with township assistance to clients, we replayed several traditional events that we have been doing over the past years including working at the Great American Cleanup last spring, awarding the Richard A Stevenson, Sr. Scholarship and the Academic Encouragement Awards at our Family Fun Day in July, giving out over 325 hams and turkeys to families for their holiday meals this winter, delivering Christmas Bureau gifts to over forty of our client families, and hosting our annual Holiday Skating Party for hundreds of children and their families in December.
Throughout the year we also took our show on the road, so to speak, as we carried our booth with pictures and literature explaining our township work to various community events including the Labor Day Picnic in July, the Summit City Community Festival, and the monthly community social services gathering at the Allen County Public Library.
And new in 2023, we awarded our first Wayne Township Person of the Year Award to Sally Becker Segerson at the Family Fun Day celebration. Sally has, for years now, been diligently showing up for the homeless population of Fort Wayne giving out food, clothing, and camping equipment at our location and elsewhere in the city.
In August we partnered with the Adams Township Trustee Office for the first “Shopping with the Trustee” event at Walmart South where we bought new back-to-school clothing for our clients’ children.
These activities were all accomplished without using township tax dollars as community donors, including our own staff members, stepped up to support the cause.
In early 2023 we created a new, modernized Wayne Township Trustee Seal to reflect the forward direction that Trustee Austin Knox has been taking us since assuming office in 2019. One example of that forward-thinking was the installation of solar panels on our building’s roof in late 2022 which have been saving the township over $1,000 per month in electricity.
As 2024 begins, we are continuing to spruce up our building with fresh paint and elbow grease. We have been opening the lobby extra hours this month giving people a chance to get out of the cold for a time and enjoy a hot cup of coffee. Sally Segerson continues to arrive each Monday morning with food and supplies to stock the Forward Indiana pantry in front of our office, and the people in need line up to meet her there. (You can follow her updates on her Facebook page: Street Reach for the Homeless.)
We have placed two computers and a printer in cubicles off our front lobby so that clients can check emails or do job and resource searching. And to ride the wave of our environmental improvements we plan, this year, to partner with the county’s Environmental Management Department to formalize our already-existing recycling program.
The year 2023 was a productive one for the Wayne Township Trustee Office and we look for 2024 to be even more fruitful. We look forward to keeping you informed of our progress in our columns for the Waynedale News. Happy New Year!
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