Cherril Peabody, AAUW Sacramento President for 2014-15
This is my last president’s column, so I have been looking back over the past year to see where we have been and what we have accomplished. One of my goals for the year was to buy a public address system for the branch so that we could hear our speakers at meetings, and we accomplished that right away. We inaugurated it at our Showcase meeting in September, where we had a full house to get our program year started.
In October, we participated for the first time in the Take Back the Night community event, the goal of which is to raise people’s consciousness about the need to make women safe from sexual predators. I believe our participation will grow in coming years. We also started exploring some new ideas about providing financial literacy training for girls in October. Those meetings led to a new partnership with several credit unions that offer interactive financial literacy training programs at local high schools. A few of our leaders presented a training at Pleasant Grove High School in April, and we hope that the number of our members volunteering with this project will grow in the years to come.
We also developed some guidelines for the interest groups and book groups to help them manage personality issues that arise in the groups from time to time. We sought input from the group leaders in developing the guidelines and offered them as a model with the understanding that they could develop their own guidelines if they preferred.
We sponsored a number of interesting events during the year. In November, Karen Duncanwood told our fascinated audience about her experiences as a Freedom Rider in Mississippi during the civil rights movement 50 years ago. In December, we had a great holiday luncheon at the Northridge Country Club with musicians from a local high school to make it even more festive. In January, we had a very successful Inter-branch Council Luncheon at Plates with two interesting AAUW fellows as speakers, both teaching at California universities. In February, Speech Trek held its most successful contest yet, with nine participants and a good contingent of AAUW members to cheer on the contestants. The winner, Ciera Miller, went on to win third place at the state AAUW Speech Trek competition in April. Ciera gave her speech again at the Installation Tea to enthusiastic applause.
In March, we had our theater fundraiser at a performance of “The Unsinkable Molly Brown.” Though we didn’t raise as much money as we had hoped, the event was well attended, and everyone seemed to have a good time. In April, we presented Israeli-American memoirist Karen Levy, who spoke at our annual Authors Luncheon very movingly about her experiences growing up in two very different countries. In May, thanks to the hard work of a whole bunch of our members, the Program Committee put together a delightful and very well attended installation tea, which also honored our 95th anniversary as an AAUW branch. We even saw some hats! We have one more activity to come, the potluck social at Della Knowles’ home this month. I hope to see many of you there – it will be fun!
As I end my term as president, I want to thank all of you who helped, some in official ways as board members and other leaders and some in unofficial ways, answering my questions – and I had many! – or doing me a favor when I needed help with something. This year has been a rewarding experience for me, and I couldn’t have done it all without your help and support!