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Happy Holidays to all of our friends, supporters and fellow advocates! Let me take a moment to look back at some of the highlights from EFO’s first year, and share my hopes for the year ahead.

First and foremost, my sincere thanks goes out to the team that makes up the rest of EFO – Saadia McConville and Mari Borden. Their hard work and dedication to fighting for economic fairness is a large part of the reason EFO was recently recognized by Consumer Reports. See the January 2012 edition of Consumer Reports featuring EFO in the Winner’s Circle after being selected as one of its top five small non-profits in the country! My favorite part of the picture is that the magic of Photoshop made me 5'11" - as tall as the two of them!

Laying the Foundation

Over the course of the year we made significant progress, learned a few hard lessons and met some of the bravest citizen advocates around. Homeowners from every corner of the state made the trip to the capitol halls to draw attention to the problem that’s on the minds of so many in our state - the foreclosure crisis. One of the most outspoken was Tim Collette, who rose to national attention by standing up to his bank and encouraging politicians to pass laws to help the thousands of Oregonians in similar situations.

The foreclosure fight is a “to be continued story”…one of our bipartisan foreclosure bills championed by Senator Suzanne Bonamici and Senator Brian Boquist passed the Senate but ultimately stalled due to the pressure and influence of big bank lobbyists. Tim, Connie, Valerie, Karen, David and the thousands of other citizen advocates who e-mailed and called their legislators urging them to pass foreclosure reforms - thank you for taking a stand! I hope you’ll be with us in 2012 as lawmakers take up the issue once again.

Stronger Together!

We learned this working with individual consumer and working with many of our allies. This spring, EFO joined with SEIU to issue a report highlighting the financial drain state contracts have on our residents and our economy. We didn’t stop with one report. We helped keep the pressure on through a nearly year-long media campaign aimed at lowering the fees US Bank charges Oregon’s unemployed and child support recipients through its ReliaCard. The result? Oregonians now have a contract with far fewer fees to look forward to in 2012.

All in all, 2011 didn’t bring an end to our economic worries, but positive strides were surely made. As we embark on 2012, we encourage you to stay involved and make your voices heard. Of course, we couldn’t do any of this without support from you. Please consider making a year-end contribution today to help us keep fighting the good fight. We’re on the brink of bringing about major achievements in consumer protection, but we’ll need your help to bring those changes to fruition. Until then, all of us here at EFO wish you and yours a wonderful holiday season!

Sincerely,

Angela Martin

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