The Selby Foundation team enjoyed creating new relationships and nurturing old ones at The Patterson Foundation’s DeSoto County Community Resource Fair on January 8, 2025.
As the new year welcomes us, we have the chance to see ourselves in new ways. One of the most powerful is to envision our ability to actively create instead of getting stuck in reaction mode to news or circumstances.
In our roles as community members (and as humans!), what will we make of this chance we are given every morning? It is easy to get mired in the details of our work and forget to consider this answer daily.
In a recent workshop I attended, group members were asked to think about sitting in our same seats in 2026, looking back at 2025. How did we walk a path that spoke to our values and how we wanted to show up in the world?
One participant shared their vulnerable health condition; they did not expect to be alive in 2026. This reflection must have touched everyone in a different way. Likely for all of us, it was a reminder that making the most of what we have in each moment–no matter what that may be–is an opportunity.
Throughout 2025, we at the Selby Foundation will continue to meet students, nonprofit leaders, and people in the community who are choosing to show up and make a positive impact with the resources, connections, and dreams available to them. We are awed by what people create, share, and make possible through their nonprofits, schools, and communities.
We are often privileged to help create good outcomes with a capital grant or a scholarship award through the legacy of Bill and Marie Selby. Regardless of what we can contribute through funding, we are always grateful to be part of conversations that help us learn from people who share a mindset of possibility.
Each of us gets to own our new morning, new week, new year. We wish you a year of realized dreams!
-Susie Bowie, President/CEO