Whew! The last few months have been quite hectic and chaotic to say the least. The AHCC has successfully launched our new web site: www.amarillohcc.org, had our Cinco de Mayo (Take II) in June, had a great annual golf tournament and now we are gearing up for our 2009 Flavors event in October which celebrates Hispanic Heritage month.

Our ribbon cuttings and hora sociales are beginning to grow as we increase our membership. There is a newly formed Welcome Committee that is already showing progress. The first task of the welcome committee was to get a trailer and gather promotional items from any member that wanted a presence at the Las Fiestas de Amarillo parade. We did it and the turnout was great! It was nice to see so much participation and the large crowd of spectators gathered in the neighborhood typically referred to as the barrio.

The AHCC now has a Facebook and Twitter page up and running. We are getting great responses from both of them. Just today I was able to get more volunteers for the Center City Block party booth that we are adopting. Incidentally, we are adopting an entrance gate and need volunteers to man this booth. If you are interested, please contact our office at 379-8800.

We are still heavily involved in the planning for Business Boot Camp which is coming up in September, be looking for more information and media on this event. The commercials are great if you haven’t seen them yet.

Our quarterly newsletter is about to be released so be watching for that. We are going to give it a try sending it out electronically and just printing what we have to. This will save us on costs and also will be beneficial to the environment.

We are currently looking for new members, if you are interested in becoming a member or know someone that might be interested, please let us know.

Have a great week!

John Salazar
Executive Director

Where do I even begin?

First of all, as you probably already know, we had to postpone our Cinco de Mayo celebration in downtown Amarillo.  Our committe felt that it was a good idea to go ahead and reschedule the event for Sunday, June 7, 2009.  Please come out and celebrate with us, it will be a good time for all!  Remember, we will also have lots of entertainment for the kiddos, so bring them out.

Our new web site has officially launched!!  We still have a few areas that need to be tweaked but we continue to work on it every day.  Thank you to 887 Media for assisting us in the development of this new site.  Please view the ribbon cutting and hora sociales sections as we plan to have photos uploaded soon.

We are also completing last minute details on our 2009 Golf Tournament!  If you are interested in a sponsorship, team or just playing feel free to contact us or view the information on our web site.

We are also in the process of putting together new information to start a big membership drive to help grow our organization.  If you know of anyone that has any interest in joining the AHCC or would like to know more about us, please have them contact our office or get me their information and I will contact them.

If anyone has any feedback or suggestions for our organization, please feel free to contact us and let us know!

John Salazar

Hello!

I hope that everyone has had a very productive week.  At least we aren’t watching a blizzard today like we were last Friday!

Our scholarship committee spent the beginning part of this week interviewing our finalists out of the 80+ applications that we received.  It was a great pleasure for all of us to meet these exceptional students!  As soon as I get the okay, I will announce the individuals that our committee selected.  Thank you very much to Annette Asencio, Amy Lopez, Charles Leard, Maury Roman and Liz Varela for helping me interview and choose the three finalists. 

Along with the selection of our scholarship recipients, there are other great organizations currently conducting interviews in preparation for the Hispanic Graduate Banquet.  I welcome anyone that would like to attend to join us for this great celebration.

On another note, we are almost ready to start looking for volunteers for our Cinco de Mayo celebration on Saturday, May 2, 2009.  This is going to be a fun event and we are expecting over 5,000 people, so please keep your eyes open for more information on this.

We are also in the process of planning for our Annual Golf Tournament which is scheduled for Friday, June 12, 2009. 

If you would like to sponsor either one of these events, please contact us in the office at 806-379-8800.

We also met with 887 Media Wednesday morning and we have lots of ideas that are currently being implemented into the development of our site.  We hope to have something great to show you by the end of next week.

If you happen to know of anyone that is interested in becoming a member, please let us know and we will invite them to join our great organization!

Liz, Nancy and I are headed to a ribbon cutting/open house at Amarillo Laser & Vein Clinic at 6810 Plum Creek Dr.  Please join us if you can to support this member of the AHCC.

I hope that everyone has a great weekend!

John Salazar - Executive Director

Hello everyone and welcome to our brand new website for the Amarillo Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.  Liz and I have been very busy with training me in my new role as the Executive Director, Cinco de Mayo, the Golf Tournament and building new membership.

Thank you to all of our new members that have recently joined.  We will soon be showcasing you on our new site. 

I invite everyone to check back continually and see the progress of our site.  I will be blogging on a regular basis to keep everyone updated on what is going on at the Amarillo Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. 

Have a great day!

John Salazar