by Sarah Soboleski  

NAPO National Loves It’s Chapters!  This month NAPO shares stories about passion and inspiration help members to achieve their successes.  

The Connecticut Chapter of NAPO is celebrating its 15th Anniversary this year! And boy did we party at our first meeting of the year on January 19th. Games, prizes, cake, and a rose ceremony rounded out our festivities.

The roots of our chapter began in 1995 when two CT Organizers, Judith Ann Kirk and Anita Taylor, had a chance meeting at the NAPO Regional Conference in Albany, New York. Shortly after, they began meeting at the restaurant of a CT Holiday Inn on a monthly basis and it wasn’t long before they started growing. Swelling to 40 members, they considered themselves the CT Organizers Informal Group.

It wasn’t until 2002 when Faith Manierre took the reins that the process of seeking chapter recognition began. In January 2003 the NAPO National Board of Directors voted to award Connecticut with the official chapter status. NAPO-CT was born!

Since then it’s been full steam ahead! Some chapter highlights over the years include:
• Three of our members earned the CPO status.
• One of our chapter members served on the National Board.
• Three of our members presented at various National Conferences.
• We’ve added an attention-grabbing cartoon to our website home page.
• We’ve revived our area’s annual regional conference with the start-up of NERCPO in 2015.
• We’ve begun a collaboration with the CT Hoarding Working group – a statewide taskforce focused on hoarding disorder.
• We’ve developed a strategic alliance with our state’s Ikea store and have participated in many of their store-wide events.
• We’ve held various GO Month initiatives to benefit children’s literacy organizations and the Big Brothers Big Sisters of CT.
• And lastly, we’ve become television stars with two of our organizing makeover contests airing on a prominent local news station.

It was an honor and a privilege as the current NAPO-CT President to recount such rich history with our members at our January meeting. It was a wonderful way to observe GO Month, welcome in the new year, and acknowledge how far we’ve come.

We handed out brightly colored portfolios to all our party goers as we couldn’t afford the traditional 15-year anniversary gifts which are crystal or a watch, but instead we tied on a tag that read:
“NAPO-CT is celebrating its 15th Anniversary by having set a CRYSTAL-clear vision for our chapter and WATCHING it successfully realized!”

Here’s to another 15 years of productivity, organizing, and having our visions successfully achieved!

Sarah Soboleski, LCSW, is a therapist who provides counseling services to individuals struggling with hoarding, OCD, anxiety, and depression. She is a member of the Institute for Challenging Disorganization, the National Association of Social Workers, the CT Hoarding Working Group Taskforce, and is the current president of NAPO-CT.