One day at work (I work at the high school) I happen to walk by my vice principal's office and I noticed he was crying. I stopped to ask if there was anything I could do and he told me about his daughter's best friend, a little 14 year old girl at the middle school, who had just had a "grapefruit size" tumor removed off one of her overies. The same week, they had found lumps in her mother's breast
from her mamogram AND just that day, the father had got laid off out at McClaren by a state cut back so they would have no insurance. Matt was devastated for this family and he said to me, "Susie, you know a lot of people, maybe there is something you can do."..... Well, as I walked across the field headed home after school, I found myself in tears. There was a group of us women who for the past several years had enjoyed a "Mother's Weekend" at Wallowa Lake and I knew I could count on these gals for anything, so I called one, (still pretty teary) and she said, "Don't worry, I will call the girls and we will be up."..... Well, a little later that evening I found myself and 9 of my very closest friends, sitting around our kitchen table and as I told them about this family, checkbooks started coming out and cash started flying onto the table. One of the gals said, "I could easily throw in $25 a month and we all agreed, but then I remembered reading about a group of women in Ohio that started a club of 100 women. Those women were able to donate $1,000.00 per year, into a fund, and once a year they would get together and donate the $100,000.00 to their community. WELL….we knew we couldn’t do anything that large, so we decided to just try and get 100 women that would like to donate $100.00 each and spend $10,000.00 each year on worthy causes in our community. We have a yearly meeting, and at that meeting, members bring forward ideas as to where they would like to see the money go. We vote….and then we award the donations. It is a very uplifting meeting and you truly go away feeling like you have changed someone’s life with your $100.00 donation. There is really nothing like it!! We try to make a difference in someone’s life where insurance coverage, personal finances or sometimes HOPE has run out. Once a year, our goal is to touch as many lives in the community as possible with some financial assistance to help them get to their “next step.”
That was 9 years ago and each year our membership has grown to where now there are over 250 names of wonderful women (and even a few men) who have donated to the cause. To date, we have donated over $100,000 to our community. We have members in Washington, Nevada, California, Idaho, Alaska (who has actually started a “sister club” up there) and even Canada…..There is an anonymous donor from Bend Oregon that has sent $3500 over the past two years…..It’s truly infectious….
