Friends of Barron has had the most successful year since we began nine years ago.

Our highlights include:

The Third Annual Medical Clinic successfully treated over 250 residents of Barron.  The new feature this year was free eye glasses donated by the Lion’s Club of New York. There is a major need for reading glasses.  Special thanks to Kris and Dick McGuire and their daughter, Dr. Bonnie Wreschner, who coordinated a team of US doctors and nurses for the 4 day clinic.  Thank you to all those EDM residents who donated their time and condos to the medical team and made their stay at EDM most enjoyable.

The Dental Program is going very smoothly under the direction of Claire Silk. The team of volunteers has enlarged the program to include fluoride treatments of elementary and kindergarten students and is really beginning to make a difference with the dental health of Barron’s children. A team of dentists will offer a dental clinic to residents of Barron in May.  One of our EDM residents, Dr. Todd Kaminsky, is aggressively seeking needed dental equipment to assist the dentists in their work.  Thank you to all the EDM residents who work at these clinics or donated your condos.  Without your support, the dental program would not be the success it is.

The Education component of Friends of Barron continues to be very active. Thanks to the generosity of Scholarship Sponsors, all of our eligible students have received funding and we are fully subscribed.  The emphasis on further education is now showing a trend of more students from Barron going to high school.   We also have 17 graduates pursuing post-secondary opportunities and 10 university scholarships which generous patrons are funding.

Our work at the schools has focused on bringing the Internet to both the elementary and junior high.  A special thanks to Carlos and his IT department at EDM that volunteered their time to set up the classrooms for Internet.  We’d also like to thank Joe Oviatt and family and Dave and Elaine Greiner for their generous donation of computers.

We are partnering with the junior high school to complete their computer classroom presently under construction.  We are also supporting the high school teachers in their application to build a classroom.

Our disappointment includes:

Our major fundraiser has always been the Annual Charity Golf Tournament held at EDM.  Our funding has steadily declined until this year, we received – nothing.  The reasons given were the one-day change of venue to El Cid and the many requests for refunds.  We are disappointed that a golf tournament, using our name to market it, has chosen not to give us any money.

Thank you to all the people who have donated money to Friends of Barron.  Without your support, all these programs would be very limited as you, are now, our only source of funding.

Thank you,

Dale and Lynda Lyster