I'm Jenny Collins and I'm the assistant to the president of the Albany area Chamber of Commerce. I'm here today to talk to you about Emerge Albany. We'll be starting our fourth year in 2012. We are the Chamber's young professional network. We specialize in social networking activities for our members, as well as professional development, community involvement, public awareness, governmental affairs programs. We want to get our younger professionals involved in our community and make sure they participate in what we have to offer and realize what Albany is. In 2012, we'll be welcoming Angela Rivera as our Chair for the year, and Casey Perkins as our Chair elect. They have got some wonderful ideas coming forward, such as hosting fundraisers, participating in "My Albany Rocks" campaign, a positive campaign towards promoting a good public image of Albany, Georgia to our residents and outside of our city.

In 2010, the Albany area Chamber of Commerce celebrated its 100th year anniversary in existence. During that process they did "100 Things to Do in Albany", activities such as visiting any of the attractions we have, flying a kite in Tift park, any kind of several things. And Emerge Albany took that as a challenge and in 2010 they set out to achieve all of those, to participate in every single thing that was listed by the Chamber of Commerce.

In 2011, our initiative was to get involved in the community that we live in and we did "Emerge Albany Gives Back". We volunteered with nonprofits such as the Lily Pads, such as the Humane Society, did a blood drive for the American Red Cross, participated in the Mardi Gras festival. We're looking forward to doing more of those community involvement activities as well.