To All Our Lou’s Family,
While we find ourselves starting another challenging year with Covid, we still wanted to wish everyone a happy and hopefully healthy New Year and reflect on the many positive things that happened in 2021. It was a year of enormous change and accomplishments for Lou’s, thanks to our great staff and many of you. We wanted to say thank you to everyone who played a part.
We remained open throughout the year despite restrictions and the surge in COVID cases. During this time we witnessed the generosity and bravery of so many. From those who cooked for us, donated to us, dropped off supplies and much more, thank you.
We also developed and expanded our Always Mum and Domestic Violence programs reaching many more women and enabling them to learn, heal and make changes in their lives even during this pandemic. Thank you to the donors that made this possible.
As most of you know the board spent the past two years fundraising and finding the right next home for Lou’s that would provide us the space we needed and include much more accessible space. We purchased Lou’s new permanent home in Redfern this past July and spent the next few months fitting out that building with the help and support of many wonderful organisations and individuals. We moved in Dec 6. Client, staff and volunteer feedback has been amazingly positive. Yes we have a few things to tweak and add in the new year but the space is light, abundant and flexible, and we can all see the opportunities it will bring and all the additional women it will allow us to help. To everyone who contributed to this massive effort thank you.
But our new premises is not the only change for Lou’s this year, after 4 ½ years of wonderful leadership, our General Manager Nicole Yade, has decided to take on a great opportunity offered her by a significantly larger organisation in the sector. Nic has been a real innovator, and a strong manager, and she built an amazing team for our new GM to work with. And we believe we have been extremely lucky to have found an outstanding candidate relatively quickly to step into those shoes, Julie Marks. Julie comes to us with years of experience with women’s services, most recently from The Coast Shelter on the central coast. I hope many of you get an opportunity to meet Julie before too long.
So what next for Lou’s Place? We enter 2022 excited and hopeful. A new home, thanks to the effort and support of so many of you, and a new GM with a fresh pair of eyes and a wealth of great experience to share. We look forward to celebrating this new space and introducing you to our new GM when we can. Given all the unknowns with Covid and the Omicron variant, we may have to delay our plans for an opening event and do a series of smaller opening tours. Whatever is has to be, we can’t wait.
Bring on 2022 and a whole new chapter for Lou’s.
Wishing you all the very best, and stay well,
The Lou’s Place Team
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