The RAM Writing Contest has been extended to November 20, 2019! Gather your words and give us your fiction, your non-fiction, anything you’d like to share in the Richmond Area Mensa Writing Contest.  Send in your best 1,500 words, but be sure to follow these guidelines:

1. All entries are due no later than midnight on November 20, 2019 by electronic submission to mensanewsrva@gmail.com. Use the PDF format if at all possible. If not, an RTF file will do. If you’ve already submitted your work, there is no need to resubmit unless you’ve made any changes.
2. Keep it clean folks! We’re a family-friendly group. No excessive violence, sex, or generally offensive material.
3. Watch your spelling, punctuation, and grammar.  This can hurt or help your entry.
4. Every entry should be double spaced. A Cover Page with the author’s name and contact info should be included. The author’s name must not appear on any page of the entry other than the cover sheet. Once the entry is received, a coded number will be assigned and put on all of the pages. Judges will be given the coded entry without the cover sheet to preserve impartiality.
5. Winners will be announced in the Winter Newsletter. The Grand Prize winning entry will also be published in the Winter Newsletter as space permits.
6. There will be five prizes:  Grand Prize is $50, First Prize is $25, Second and Third Place will each receive $10, and an honorable mention will receive $5.

Good luck!

by Santiago Osorio
Richmond Area President

Greetings Everyone! I can’t believe half of 2019 is already history.  I hope it’s been a great year so far.

I’ll get right to the point – WE NEED VOLUNTEERS! Like everybody else, RAM volunteers have life-changing events that affect the amount of time they’re able to dedicate to “optional” activities, such as volunteering. Several of us have had life-changing events and can’t serve at the level we would like, so we have a few open positions. They are:

• Membership Chair
• Gifted Youth Coordinator
• Dining Out Coordinator

If you are even remotely interested in any of the above positions, or any volunteering position (we also have some volunteers that are getting ready to move on), please contact me and I will happily answer any questions you have.  Even if you are interested in volunteering temporarily, please reach out to me because a time-limited volunteering stint helps us too.

Speaking of volunteers, I’d like to thank Allan Sanders for stepping up and taking on the Social Media Coordinator duties, on top of his duties as Vice President and Proofreader. Also, thanks to our Web Master, Brendan Dodds, for not only reviving and maintaining our RAM website, but also for organizing the RAM Board Game SIG. I hope to see you at the next one (see our Events calendar for details).  And once I start thanking volunteers, I can’t help but express how much I appreciate all of them, so thank you John, Deb, Victoria, Lynnette, Stephanie, Jodie, Catherine, Fred, and Lorne for your contributions.

Finally, I’d like to remind you that any RAM member can arrange an event.  RAM welcomes and encourages this, so please contact Victoria Mikula if you need any help with arranging or advertising an event. And if you anticipate that you or other members will need reimbursement, then please estimate what the upper range is and provide that estimate to Victoria, as any funding by RAM has to be pre-approved by theExComm.

Thanks for your time and consideration,
Santi