Newsletter - Women's Fund of Santa Barbara

Bring a Friend to a Special Day

What a very special day (9:30 am-1:30 pm) Jan Baxter and her committee has planned for our members and their guests!

            Tuesday, September 16
            Fourth Annual Site Visit

      Mark Your Calendar
            Bring a Friend

Annual Site Visit

By bus we will tour Storyteller, Transition House, and the new headquarters of Court Appointed Special Associates (CASA), which is from our 2006 grant.Then we go to Girls Inc. Greater Santa Barbara for lunch (underwritten by Carole MacElhenny) and updates from other 2007 recipients: Angels Foster Care of SB, Casa Pacifica, Family Service Agency, Isla Vista Youth Projects and People's Self Help Housing. Lastly we tour Girls Inc.’s new facility, board the bus and return to our meeting point. An option for those with less time is to attend just the lunch and updates. Mark your calendars for this great day where we see first hand how our Fund gives back to the community. More details will be coming as well as invitations.

Fun Fact: Out of more than 300 Women’s Fund members, we have email addresses for all but 13 women thanks to Yolanda Van Wingerden, Dana Istre, Carol Betker and Fran Adams. Fran is sending by regular mail our newsletters to these 13 women.

$35,000! That’s what we can give back to the community just from our new 2008 individual members (with the Orfalea Fund match) to date. See below HOW WE GROW for fun with group member expansions.

Website Update: Mary Garton chairs a committee who has been updating our website including: Fran Adams, Karen Robinson and Regina Roney. They have done a super job of making the site more user friendly and interesting. New to come will be captions for all the pictures and other tidbits. You may enjoy reading Why We Joined. So click and enjoy.

Why Women’s Fund Likes Education So Much. When our members vote on their top Areas of Interests each year, Education has always come to the top. 2008 Research Chair Stina Hans explains why this occurs in her highly interesting article below: KEEPING GOOD COMPANY.

Happy Summer Days,
Jo Gifford,
2008 Oversight Chair

HOW WE GROW!
Stina Hans has been a member (and captain) of her Women’s Fund’s group (Women’s Forum) since our beginning in 2004. Not only has her group remained together, but also this year they added five more members and formed a new group. So now we have “Rhythm…” and “…Blues” under the umbrella of the Women’s Forum.

Carrie Randolph joined the Women’s Fund just last year as a member of the SB Parent.Com MOMS group. This year she decided to gather more friends together and spin off a second group. She must have LOTS of friends, because she has now formed TWO new Women’s Fund groups called — “Instead of Shoes.”

Thanks to the creativity of these two women, we will have an additional $15,000 (including the Orfalea Fund matching grant) to donate to our community non-profits who so desperately need our help.

So, rally around some friends, come up with a fun (even funky) name and form a Women’s Fund group of five friends @ $500 each or 10 friends @$250 each.

We’re here to help you if you have any questions.

Group Membership Co-chairs:
Fleurette Barson-Janigian (884-1519) fjanigian@yahoo.com
Parm Williams (683-5775); parmw@cox.net

KEEPING GOOD COMPANY
What do Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and John Jay have in common with our members?

Since the inception of the Women’s Fund, our members have voted education as one of the areas of interest to research. Recently, someone asked why this was so. While it may not be everyone’s view that education is a natural right or an absolute right as Horace Mann, our first Secretary of Education asserts, it does seem that our members feel that an educated society is an essential underpinning to a healthy society. This was a view widely held by (among others) John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and the First Chief Justice of the United States, John Jay, who stated:

“I consider education to be the soul of a Republic and as the weak and wicked are generally in alliance, as much care should be taken to diminish the number of the former as of the latter. Education is the way to do this..”

In whatever form it comes, education is the great equalizer. Education at all ages is important. But the founders and framers of this nation were talking specifically about educating the young. The young will be adults. These adults will be our leaders and those who make decisions affecting all of us, our society, and our environment. It is therefore in our interest to educate our young as much we possibly can. In fact, one could almost say, it is imperative.

There are many agencies within our community that are trying to bring education to all segments of our community. One seeks to bridge the ‘digital divide’ and provide computers to elementary school children and families of the children who could otherwise not afford them. Another has a partnership with UCSB to provide tutoring where the student can be in one location, and the tutor can be in another location, using computers with resident cameras so that the tutor and student can be ‘face-to-face.” A third starts education at the pre-kindergarten level so that students can be well prepared when they enroll in the public schools. There are numbers of after school and homework programs that can and do make a difference. The list goes on.

Looking at some of the more oppressed nations, one can observe that education is not widely available. Is education, as the founders of our nation believed, essential to the preservation of a democratic society? It would seem that the women of the Women’s Fund feel the answer is: yes!

In partnership with Santa Barbara Foundation