2nd annual Celebration of International Friendship a great success

The second annual Celebration of International Friendship at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts this past Friday was a great success! Thanks to everyone that participated. I think you will all agree that the evening was special.

There are so many that we have to thank for putting on the evening. I want to start with a few here. First and foremost, I want to thank Ann Soby for planning and running the event, she was a rock despite a lot of little surprises in execution. I need to give a very special thanks to the West Point Glee Club – Col. Greg Ebner and Ms. Connie Chase and all the cadets – what a performance! Their motto is “No fun without music – no music without fun” and they lived up to it completely! I want to thank Ms. Gabrielle Reilly, our honorary Chair for the event, for her support with sponsors. I want to thank Joan Cabell for finding our corporate and individual sponsors, the costs for a program like this are high and we couldn’t have done it without their help. I also want to thank Mark Wiggins for publicity and the program work with the Kauffman. Finally, the staff at the Kauffman Center were great assisting with planning and during the event.

I also want to shout out to our partners at the KC Chapter of People to People, Operation International of the Leavenworth/Lansing Area Chamber of Commerce, and the International Military Student Division at CGSC. Their ideas and energy were key to the success.

I need to thank our presenting sponsor, Mr. Clive Palmer; our Global sponsor People to People International; our international sponsors The Tim and Karen Carlin Foundation, Faultless Starch and the Beaham family, DuraComm and Edith and Benny Lee; plus all of our other fine sponsors. Please take a look at our corporate partners page for the full list of sponsors for the event.

We will conduct an AAR (After Action Review) next week to learn the lessons to apply for next year’s event. Please give us feedback so we make improvements. We’ve asked the West Point Glee Club if they would consider a return engagement and we’ll make next year’s event even better than this one.

Thanks again for your support of this most entertaining and important event.

Photos from the evening and from the Glee Club’s visit to the World War I Museum at Liberty Memorial are on our Facebook page. Also, Fox4 KC did a news story about the Glee Club’s impromptu performance at the museum.

Doug Tystad
Chief Executive Officer
CGSC Foundation, Inc.