01/30/2013
Our Annual Meeting will be held on Tuesday, Feb. 5, 2013 at 6PM at the Riviera Restaurant. We will have an election for Board Members and then an election for Officers. Please make every effort to attend this meeting. Also, please seriously consider joining our Board or even better becoming an Officer. Our organization will only be as vibrant as its members, Board and Officers are willing to make it by devoting their time and energy.
We need more members involved and we need our Board more invested in devoting their energies. Over the years we have been
involved in so many great projects. In my 1st year as President of PAWA in 1993 we hosted the First Lady of Portugal , Maria Barroso ,with events at Brown University in Providence, the Lusitania Club in Cumberland and Leslie University in Cambridge. It took an incredible amount of time and energy but it gave our Communities the opportunity to meet a woman who had worked hard to overthrow the vestiges of the Salazar dictatorship. In case we might have gotten lazy, in 1994, the First Lady came again and was hosted at Bristol Community College and Leslie University. We forged a bond and became a nationally recognized organization. So in 1995 we were invited by the First Lady to visit Lisbon and we were hosted for an elegant lunch at the residential Palace, a formal dinner party hosted by the Mayor of Lisbon (Jorge Sampaio) who subsequently became President of Portugal! President Sampaio remembered his dinner with all the Ladies very fondly and so did his wife and when a group of us formed the Portuguese American Scholarship Fund, and were having the 1st fundraising dinner, Mrs. Sampaio came
from Portugal to be our Guest of Honor.
In the meantime, we have had dinners and events at the Biltmore Omni Plaza Hotel in Providence honoring and celebrating many other women of Portuguese descent including but not limited to:
Nellie Furtado (international music artist), Meredith Vieira( nationally recognized broadcaster), Dina Vega (the former First Lady of New Jersey) , Teresa Heinz Kerry, (a philanthorpist and whose husband ran on the Democratic ticket for President in 2004), Teresa Paiva W**d, the current President of the RI Senate and Luisa Cesar the former First Lady of the Azores. (Mrs. Cesar hosted a group of 20 PAWA members in 2001 at the Presidential Palace and we held a 3 day conference at the University of the Azores in Sao Miguel.)
And we can not foget our wine and cheese fundraisers in Downtown Providence where one year we raised funds for the Samaritans of Fall River and another year we donated funds to the Diabetes Association of Fall River. We held an elegant Fado Night on the Providence Waterfront that raised $5,000 for Breast Cancer and the donation was made to Women and Infants
Hospital. During this past year we had a scrapbooking event
in Swansea and raised neary $1,000 for local food pantries and we also enjoyed and an elegant waterfront brunch in Newport.
Over these past 20 years that I have been President of PAWA we have made financial donations to The Cancer Society, The Heart Association, the Samaritans , the Diabetes Association and the
Alzheirmer's Association. And the above litany of PAWA activities is only what I can remember without consulting our Archives and doing any research. I expended a great deal of time and energy in making all of these events successful along with a team of very dedicated PAWAFUL Women. But it has not always been the same team but it has always been me at the helm. It has been a very busy 20 years for me and I am tired and in need of new people to get involved .
So get involved. Come to the Annual Meeting with your energy and ideas. We need a strong organization to represent professional women of Portuguese Descent. We can do whatever you want to do.
Let me or Ines or any of our Officers know what your thoughts are. Check our website: pawa.org and see what a great job Ines continues to do with updating everyone.
See you Feb 5 at 6 at the Riviera Restaurant and let's talk and enjoy dinner.
Susan
