Friends,

Henry Ford wrote: “The tragedy in life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach.” If you are looking for a way to get engaged in helping community and make a powerful difference in the lives of others, by instilling hope where none existed and giving others the ability to create the lives of their dreams, I invite you to consider getting involved in a project called Put Your Best Foot Forward that I started this past year. Whether you want to get involved personally, get your company involved, donate clothing, or simply come to the benefit happy hour and get others to come, there are plenty of ways to contribute. More background information and details about an upcoming kickoff meeting for new volunteers is provided below.

On Saturday, April 7, 2007, my firm, together with our 6 community partners and 2 other corporate sponsors held a full-day job workshop called Put Your Best Foot Forward. Over 100 volunteers got involved and approximately 40 from different disadvantaged backgrounds attended this event. We held this event after learning members of our community either on welfare, homeless, in community-based housing, or otherwise disadvantaged possessed the desire to find a great job. Organizations involved included the Carpenter’s Shelter of Alexandria, Alexandria Job Link, Arlington Street People’s Assistance Network, and the Arlington-Alexandria Coalition for the Homeless, Whole Foods, and CVS.

Our workshop provided the enthusiasm, tools and empowerment that attendees needed to believe in themselves again. In addition to the empowering trainings and encouraging guest speaker, we offered lunch, a fashion show and the chance to shop in our free clothing boutique, featuring gently used business casual and professional attire for both men and women. Best of all, over 1/3 the participants walked away with jobs within the first two months of the workshop’s completion! I encourage you to watch our video and get a feel of our event!

Knowing the success our participants had in finding jobs; and certain of the positive impact to our community, GPS decided to increase the effort. This year the workshop will be held on April 19, 2008 at the Dr. Oswald Durant Memorial Center, 1605 Cameron Street, Alexandria, VA. This time around we would like to invite even more attendees, collect more clothing, and raise more money. There will also be a benefit happy hour in March 27, 2008 at Rumors in Dupont Circle. Last year’s attendance included 150 people and we expect close to double that number this year!

So you might be asking yourself at this point “what can I do to help and how to get I involved?” There are more ways to get directly involved than you imagine from being on the planning committee to helping us increase the number of sponsors by engaging your company to hosting a clothing drive or simply donating your own professional gently used clothing. You could also volunteer at the actual event or come to the benefit happy hour and bring your friends.

The Put Your Best Foot Forward Team is hosting a kickoff meeting and conference call to answer questions from new volunteers on this project on December 19th from 5:30PM-7:00PM. The meeting will be held at Grant Thornton’s office in Alexandria, VA and call-in capabilities will be provided. If you would like to attend or call into this meeting, please let me know ASAP and either me or someone on the team will follow up with all the details.

If you can’t attend this meeting but would like to get involved anyway, just let me know as well how you would like to get involved and what questions I can answer for you.

THANK YOU IN ADVANCE FOR HELPING TO MAKE A REAL DIFFERENCE!

Joshua Kriger