Last Satuday March 21st was an important day for Casa de Venezuela; on that day, at the Crane building where our annual art exhibition is undergoing, more than thirty members met to listen and approve the annual report presented by the board of directors, launch the redesigned website, and celebrate our 5th anniversary.

Emilio Buitrago, President, and Arturo Guillen, Treasurer of Casa de Venezuela delivered a presentation that showed the achievements of the organization during the fiscal year 2008-2009, which included activities, programs, status of membership, financial reports, and several other initiatives. During the meeting the members were able to share their concerns and provide their feedback.

One highlight of the event was the launching of the new website by Ruben Reyes, board member in charge of Technology and Outreach. Ruben explained that the new website was redesigned to improve its image and functionality, as well as to expand the audience to visitors from all around the world by providing completely bilingual contents in English and Spanish.

The new website is integrated to social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, drop down menus for easy navigation, an online membership system that allow members to update their profiles and renew their memberships, as well as easy access buttons for making donations and sharing the website with friends. The News section will provide details of past events, including reviews, photos, videos and the possibility for visitors to post comments. All those improvements will enable Casa de Venezuela to reach a larger audience, effectively communicate with members and the community at large, and support its mission of promoting the roots, culture, traditions and folklore of Venezuela in the Delaware Valley.

This new site was possible thanks to a grant received from The Funders' Collaborative for Strong Latino Communities of Hispanics in Philanthropy. The design and technology was developed by Lyquix, a local business devoted to provide technology consulting for small businesses and non-for-profit organizations that want to take advantage of technology to improve their performance.

At the end of the presentation the report was approved by the members. Following, Andreina Castillo, member of the board in charge of Culture and Arts Programs and curator of the Dialogo 365 exhibition, provided a private tour through the exhibition that has works from 37 Latino and Latinamerican artists. After enjoying and learning more about the works of art, the members joined a cocktail party to celebrate the 5th anniversary of Casa de Venezuela.

We would like to thank Oscar Izarra, who designed the site casadevenezuela.net in 2004, which was a great tool to promote our organization on the web; also, we would like to thank all the members that attended this event who celebrated one more year of Casa de Venezuela.