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What is The Outreach Connection?
TOC (The Outreach Connection) was Rachel and Shannon's greatest hope and vision when they literally sat their living room in front of a white board and mapped out the frame work for the entire organization in late 2018. TOC Center was the "big goal" when they officially formed the charity in February of 2019. Just over a year later, because of amazing support from the community and a team of amazing volunteers, they were able to acquire the space to bring it to life! The Outreach Connection is now an organization that offers the community a welcoming space that serves many purposes. By providing a wide array of supportive services to those in need and a variety of volunteer opportunities the aim is to strengthen the connections to our neighbors from all walks of life through acts of kindness and compassion.
Our Story
What started out as simple donation drives using Shannon's house as a drop off point for donations in 2018 rapidly spiraled into a much larger, ongoing effort to serve different parts of the community in diverse ways. Through their love of helping others (humans and their pets), and as two women with strong entrepreneurial skills, it organically became the goal to create something larger than themselves. This duo has boundless energy and drive to create compassionate interactions with the most vulnerable people in the local community. Together, they are working to involve members of the community in an inspiring and innovative mission to connect us all in kindness for those in need.
What We Do
At our very core, The Outreach Connection is about bringing communities together in volunteerism through a common desire to compassionately help those in need. We are a private 501c3 nonprofit corporation, without any state or government funding.
All of our work is funded from private donations of money, goods, and countless hours of volunteer time.
We help people experiencing hardship through our various outreach programs, all of which stem from a deep dedication to offering relief for those in their hardest moments.
At the heart of what we do is the distribution of food and supplies to those in the most vulnerable situations, and programming aimed at assisting individuals to acquire the tools that will provide them with a more stable, successful future. Supplying essential living items such as food and hygiene supplies allows money that would otherwise be used for those items to go towards other necessities including heat, utilities and other bills. Providing mentor-ship and connections to other resources helps to acquire personal and professional skills for success.
From those experiencing homelessness to those who are struggling in hardship from any number of situations, each situation dictates a different need.
Our Philosophy
We know that in order for someone’s circumstances to get better tomorrow, they often need help to just get through today. It is our philosophy that those experiencing hardship come from all walks of life and it is our role to interact only with compassion, support, and dignity to get to a better circumstance.
We strongly believe that caring interactions are the catalyst that allows people to persevere for a brighter future. When those experiencing hardship have to struggle with what bills to pay, how to purchase clothing, dishes, and household goods, it can seem insurmountable. We know our programs can lessen their burden, and allow them to utilize their funds to the best of their ability.
Founders
Rachel
Executive Director/Co-Founder
Rachel@theoutreachconnection.org
Rachel completed her degree at Centenary University in Marketing and Business Management. She is driven and experienced far beyond her years, with a deep history of being active in many causes and working hard from a young age. She is an extremely experienced event planner, social media marketing expert, and has an incredible vision for her career as a co-founder of The Outreach Connection. The easy route would have been to quickly get a job in her field using her experience working with animals at care facilities, volunteering, event planning, and her organizational and business skills. The route she chose that is far more challenging, and yet far more rewarding: to be an integral force in the success of The Outreach Connection. She has sat on the board of directors for Pink Heals, Lehigh Valley for 2 years until leaving that position to start this new non-profit venture from the ground up. It is through her dedication to making a difference in the lives of others that she welcomes this chapter for her post graduation career. Her desire to brighten the days of people who are struggling carries into her work with volunteers as well as those that are served through this organization.
Shannon
Chairman of the Board/Co-Founder
Shannon@theoutreachconnection.org
Shannon has been an OSHA authorized trainer and a Construction and Environmental Health and Safety Professional for over 15 years. She also began teaching CPR over 25 years ago. Before becoming a mother, she worked her way from an overnight staff to a group home manager for The Arc Of Morris County and then became a Project Director for Developmental Resources Corporation, overseeing five community group homes. Both organizations are dedicated to compassionately serving developmentally disabled adults. Her dedication and love of animals, children, and community service integrated into her professional work over the past 25 years. She has founded and run two recreational gymnastics centers and an educational wildlife conservation center, which flourished even while they overlapped her career in Safety. She served as the president of the Voorhees High School Music Association for four years and volunteered on countless projects for her children's Boy Scout and school based organizations. It was while travelling to inspect construction sites and conduct safety and health classes throughout all of New Jersey and New York that she began distributing supplies to those in homelessness, and to area animal shelters near the various job sites she worked on. This is where it all truly began. With the support and partnership of her daughter in law Rachel, they both desired to do so much more.
Board of Directors
Marc Laul
Paula Nicolai
Paula Nicolai
Marc Laul has been the Technical Services Director at Sander Mechanical Service for over 30 years. He has served as an elected official on the Lebanon Township Committee and has served on the Lebanon Township Planning Board and the Environmental and Open Space Commission. His dedication towards community service started as a life long boy scout who achieved Eagle Scout, and it spanned an eleven year term of service as Cub Master, then Scout Master of Troop 92 In Lebanon Township.
Paula Nicolai
Paula Nicolai
Paula Nicolai
Paula Nicolai’s career of service started as a teacher in special education for over 30 years, with a specialty in teaching the deaf. Paula’s dedication to quality education and youth programming includes serving for 15 years on the Lebanon Township Board of Education. She has been a life long volunteer for various community organizations. She spent ten years as a Girl Scout Leader, six years as a host family for Seeing Eye Puppies, and currently as a Hunterdon Hospice Volunteer in the Youth Art Therapy bereavement program.
Diana Ramsey
Diana Ramsey
Diana Ramsey
Diana Ramsey and her husband Phil Gartlan moved to Califon four years ago from Morristown where she lived for nearly thirty years. Her daughter and three children live locally and her step-daughter is in Collingswood, NJ with her three children. Diana's younger daughter, Megan is deceased. Diana is a teacher-educator who has taught at the graduate level across the United States and in Canada. Her teaching career started in Somerville and Lebanon Borough. She co-founded an educational design and consulting company, Regional Training Center, working in partnership with The College of New Jersey and LaSalle University to offer courses more locally, and is now the sole owner. Diana started with The Outreach Connection as a volunteer and has been appointed to their Board of Directors.
Mark Weber
Diana Ramsey
Diana Ramsey
Currently, Mark serves part-time as a senior executive advising Kore.ai, the leading Enterprise Conversational AI Platform, on expanding business and advancing rapidly evolving conversational AI technologies towards the needs of the healthcare industry. Prior to joining Kore.ai, Mark was the Senior Vice President, Client Success at Infor responsible for all large healthcare and other services industry clients. In that role, Mark lead an executive team that partnered with the clients’ c-suite to achieve on-going success in the deployment of Infor solutions from inception through implementation and on-going value realization. At Infor, Mark also served as the global SVP for healthcare product management and development, and as the Chief Business Information Officer supporting healthcare industry strategy, messaging, and business development.
Before joining Infor, Mark was a senior IT executive at the Cleveland Clinic, an executive director at IBM, a management consultant at Booz Allen & Hamilton, a senior consultant at
Grant Thornton, LLP, and a senior trading systems developer at CIBC. With over 25 years of experience in provider health care, technology services, and financial
services, Mark has been consistently recognized for leadership of global innovation and operational programs that realize significant, sustained value. He was named by IT Services Report as one of “The Top 25 Healthcare IT Executives of 2020”. Mark holds an MS in Computer Science from NYU’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences and completed Harvard Business School’s Executive Program in Managing Health Care
Delivery.