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Across the Fence:  Women Who Gather  |
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Denali
Farmgirl at Heart
7 Posts
Denali
Troy
Idaho
USA
7 Posts |
 Posted - Mar 01 2010 : 3:03:49 PM
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In the March issue of the Farmgirl Sisterhood newsletter, "The Cluck," MaryJane introduces you to Moscow, Idaho's, Worthwhile Club. If you know of women in your town who gather together for the greater good, post your stories and photos here. To get inspired, read MaryJane's story about Moscow's Worthwhile Club...
It's Women Who ...
This spring, when the movers and shakers in my hometown of Moscow, Idaho, got together to plan a ground-breaking sustainable local food production summit, more than two-thirds of the committee members were women. When the steering committee of Buy Local Moscow meets to support locally owned businesses and strengthen our local economy, 10 of the 11 committee members are women. When the board of the Palouse-Clearwater Environmental Institute (the organization I founded 24 years ago) gets together, 70 percent of its members are women.
Do you see a pattern here? It’s women who take that extra step to sign up, join in, hold hands, support each other, and attend meetings. Perhaps, due to our ties to children and the future, women are envisioning ways to bring sustainability and green values into our communities. And maybe due to traditional female strength in building relationships, women are forming alliances and working together for real change. In Moscow, it’s women who are making a difference today.
That should be no surprise. In frontier Idaho, women were valued partners, and the state was among the first to support equality for women. Women could vote in Idaho for more than two decades before the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920. Ever since Moscow was established in 1876, women have been a civilizing influence, the social force behind the creation of parks, schools, and more. Take Moscow’s library, for example. Moscow was less than a decade old in 1885, when the Women’s Reading Room Society gathered a few dozen books and opened a tiny library upstairs in a commercial building downtown. Six years later, two local women’s organizations, the Pleiades and the Ladies’ Historical Club, joined forces to harness public support and raise the funds to construct a public library. In 1906, the library opened, thanks to the women of Moscow.
But town women were not the only active ones. Rural women in the region were also banding together to do good work. They created women’s clubs to support their local school districts, and almost every one of the small rural schools scattered around the region had one. Just over Paradise Ridge from my farm was one of my favorite groups: the Worthwhile Club. In 1929, six women established the club, agreeing on the motto, “Our name and our aim are the same.” By the mid-1930s, 35 women were paying dues and meeting twice monthly. Sure, they got together for fun and to talk about their biggest passions—family, gardening, and handwork—but they also raised money for the school and local charities (including an orphanage and a school for disabled children) and made quilts for farm families who lost their homes in fires. They also placed the monument shown at left at the site of the Mount Tomer School. The plaque remains today, even though the club itself has disbanded, a victim of changing demographics and changing times.
Moscow is not the only community where women are leading social change. Women make these differences across Idaho, our nation, and around the world. The pivotal role of women around the globe is the focus of a new best-seller and much-talked-about book, Half the Sky, by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. They argue that women are critical to meaningful social change in developing countries around the world. They give endless examples of positive change that results when women take action. The authors discovered that developing nations that facilitated that power and invested in women’s health and autonomy reaped profound social and economic benefits.
“In my town, it’s women who ...” (post your stories and photos here)
In 1990, nine of the last 10 members of the Worthwhile Club,
founded in 1929, met at their monument.
Helping Hands
In the Oct/Nov 09 issue of MaryJanesFarm, we reported that a million more Americans volunteered in 2008 than did so the previous year. Recently, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that 63.4 million people volunteered at least once between September 2008 and September 2009—an increase of about 1.6 million over that same period in the previous year. The report also showed that about one in four Americans volunteer and that most of the increase was thanks to women! |
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tribalcime
True Blue Farmgirl
2963 Posts
lisa
lexington
ky
USA
2963 Posts |
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Mikki
True Blue Farmgirl
1510 Posts
Mikki
Austin
Indiana
USA
1510 Posts |
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delicia
True Blue Farmgirl
917 Posts
delicia
cincinnati
ohio
USA
917 Posts |
Posted - Mar 01 2010 : 4:32:35 PM
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WOW. I just love to see the photo and am so thankful for the women who have worked so hard.
delicia |
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debtea2
True Blue Farmgirl
1853 Posts
deborah
nutley
nj
USA
1853 Posts |
Posted - Mar 01 2010 : 7:59:33 PM
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this is so inspiring
god bless us farmgirls
inch by inch we find our way
jersey farmgirl |
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Ms. Hannigan
True Blue Farmgirl
57 Posts
Shari
Middle
TN
USA
57 Posts |
Posted - Mar 05 2010 : 8:45:58 PM
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In our little town, the women are the social backbone of the community. Groups like the FCE are feeding the hungry, caring for seniors, stamping out illiteracy, sending care packages to local soldiers, and cheering up the sick. Women run the farmers market. Women own most of the small businesses on the town square. We even had a woman for mayor until she passed away in a tragic accident that shook the whole town. There are women volunteering to read in the schools, leading bible study groups in the county jail, and raising money for the local foster care program. I know of women teaching each other to knit, to crochet, to tat, to can, and to use the computer. Everywhere you turn, women are making a difference here in TN!
...some women are drippin' with diamonds... some women are drippin' with pearls... look at me, lucky me, the only thing I'm drippin' with is... little girls...
Farmgirl #1158
blog: http://www.lifegetsmessy.com
website: http://www.eatlocaltn.com |
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Across the Fence: Women Who Gather |
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Women Who Gather
