Celebrating 20 Years!

Posted by Tina

 

Our members and friends enjoyed a wonderful evening at the Valencia Ballroom in York as we celebrated our 20th Anniversary as an organization. We have come a long way over the past 20 years and our continued growth and success is because of our members, our sponsors and our partners.  This evening was our celebration.

Ready for guests to arrive

 

Food stations with an international flair - and delectable selections - were set up around the room for guests to enjoy while networking.

Tina Weyant thanked our event sponsors:  Bentley World Packaging, Fulton Bank, MANTEC and Stambaugh Ness, as well as the event's "performance sponsor" Barley Snyder LLC and "table sponsor" John S. Connor.  She then introduced Mayor C. Kim Bracey, Mayor of the City of York, who offered congratulatory remarks.  WTC Board Chair Kim Willing provided a brief summary of our organization's history and thanked current and past board members, sponsors and partners.

You can see highlights of our timeline on the WTC website and here is a link to the slideshow we played during the event.

We then awarded prizes to participants in our year long "WTC Passport" initiative.  Over 300 individuals had requested passports and had earned special "stamps" through various activities, including attending events, engaging with WTC via social media, giving referrals, offering their expertise to other members, and contributing to our blog or newsletter.

"Passport" prizes are ready to be awarded

All attendees also received a gift bag to take home.  Thanks to all our members who contributed items for passport prizes and gift bags:  

Barley Snyder, Bentley World Packaging, Fulton Bank, Gannett Fleming, John S. Connor, Stambaugh Ness, Turkey Hill Dairy, Wolfgang Candies and York Wallcoverings

We even had a special WTC birthday cake: 

Jan, Melissa, Kim Willing (WTC Board Chair) and Tina

Entertainment was provided by Pasos Caribenos, a folkloric dance group that promotes and preserves the Latino culture.  Their performance at our Anniversary Celebration was actually the group's last performance, as the dancers will be graduating from college soon.  Their performance was incredible and we were fortunate to have them participate.

Jan collects gifts at the registration table

Since our anniversary celebration coincided with the holidays, we partnered with the York YWCA for their holiday gift drive to benefit Access-York.  Everyone who brought a toy received a $10 coupon for a WTC event in 2012.  We could not believe the generosity or our attendees that evening - Thank You to Everyone!!

Gifts collected by end of the evening