The AFF hosted 175 guests at our December 22nd Social Event, in which we partnered with The Red Hook Faculty Association, The Red Hook Harvest Group and The Red Hook Public Library. Together, and thanks to the generosity of so many within the Red Hook community and beyond, we fundraised $9765 for the underserved youth of the community and set the stage for an engaging, uplifting, and relationship-building 2017. We look forward to how our relationship with the Community Center, the venue for December's event, will provide future opportunities for local giving initiatives by the AFF, as well as the general collaboration of many engaged Red Hook residents and community groups. We look forward to a yearly event that will allow us to celebrate the bonds formed in our community, and fundraise for those most in need.
Our list of goals for this coming year include partnering with the Community Center Board in assisting their program development for elder needs in Red Hook, as well as strengthening our ties with our partner organizations listed above. An important area of our mission still left relatively untapped, we are most interested in establishing a transportation initiative that will bring programs to the elderly in assisted living facilities, or bringing the elderly to programs developed by the Community Center Board or other organizations, such as the Public Library. We encourage those in the community to reach out to us with your ideas about how best to meet our mission locally and what needs are most pressing or overlooked.
To our class of 2015 ambassadors, we extend enormous thanks for initiating the foundation's footprint across the country. Our inaugural class of ambassadors have been exemplary in their personal advocacy for the past two years, and many will oversee the implementation of grants into 2017. Our 2016 and 2017 ambassador classes (15 in individuals) will follow in the original ambassadors' footsteps, and over the next year establish connections with local agencies for which they will advocate for come the fall. We look forward to seeing the new connections and advocacy roles that these classes of ambassadors take on all across the country.
Delivering on our mission statement has been a sizable task, and will continue to be, but with our early successes in 2015 and 2016, there is every reason to believe we will deliver again in 2017. There is so much more that any group or organization must contemplate in reaching its full potential - we are no different. We rely on all of our personal and connected bonds with Red Hook, its community members, and our ambassadors to embrace all our potential for giving, advocacy, and growth within the next year.