Eureka Grange #46, Lyons, Wayne County, New York has benefited greatly from the Action Grange Program. First off it lead to much discussion which dealt with from "Should we sell our hall?" to "How do we interest more people in our Grange?"

Our efforts to improve and renew our Grange have met with a great deal of success. We created a visitors/new residents guide to the community, which includes information on local churches, fraternal organizations, businesses, and other information that would be useful to a new resident. Three of our members are taking an active role on committees for the new Action Plan for our county. This year our Grange participated in a housing development garage sale, which raised revenue for the program while, at the same time, raised public awareness of the Grange and its activities. We are interested in helping with a county project that involves refurbishing a local building. That is still in the planning stage. One of our most popular and worthwhile service projects is to make teddy bears and donate them to Doctor's offices and hospitals. As we continue our community involvement programs we hope to join with other organizations in our communities to pursue join community service activities.

To improve the efficiency of our meetings we have also made some minor changes to the normal Grange routine. We now only read the business portion of our minutes to refresh our minds from the previous meeting, and we have rearranged our stations so that they are closer together. This helps those who have trouble hearing, makes for a friendlier atmosphere, and closes the distance for walking and thus shortens the meeting a bit. Our hall is large and we really like the new arrangement as we leave tables set up on the other half.

Most of out members have accepted the changes without much complaint. Our recent election brought some changes so we are looking forward to a new year filled with action!

Carol S. Bailey