Seventy seven years ago a member of the local Soroptimist Club had the creative idea of cooking up a hot breakfast and serving it to area residents – all in the comfort of the great outdoors at Riverside Park.

Soroptimist International of La Grande has kept that idea going and growing over the past seven decades, and area breakfast lovers can again indulge in hot cakes, sausage and eggs at Riverside Pavilion on Sunday, June 2 from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. Tickets are available from any club member or at the door. Cost is $6 for adults and $5 for children under age 12.

Net proceeds from the Breakfast in the Park go toward a $5000 scholarship for an Eastern Oregon University senior woman from Union County.

The breakfast this year will be extra special, as the La Grande High School Tiger Marching Band will be unveiling their new uniforms at 10:30 a.m. with a live, on-site performance in the park in honor of SILG’s financial support in purchasing the uniforms.

La Grande Soroptimists have enjoyed a lengthy history working with Riverside Park Pavilion and the La Grande Parks and Recreation Department. The Soroptimists purchased the first kitchen appliances back in 1953, and later paid for the fireplace upgrades in the 1970s. After the disastrous fire in 2011 that totally destroyed the pavilion, Soroptimists donated $25,000 from their Maxine Cook Endowment Fund to purchase the new stainless steel appliances for the pavilion kitchen. Members of the club also helped design the new commercial kitchen. Maxine Cook was a long-time member of the local Soroptimist Club.

For more information on the June Breakfast and Soroptimist International of La Grande please contact lagrandesoroptimist@gmail.com

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Soroptimist Governor Marti Crook’s theme for the 101^st Region Conference was “Growing Stronger Together – Working as One” and her garden and flower theme was in full bloom throughout the whole weekend at Skamania Lodge.

Governor-Elect Kristi Puckett put her own spin on the theme with a special bingo game. She planted pictures of various flower varieties everywhere, and I mean everywhere, and it was fun watching all the ladies scamper around the grounds looking for clues.

Friday night 78 beautifully decorated Garden Hats were modeled and then set up around the conference center to be voted on. There are some extremely creative and talented Soroptimists in our region, for sure!

I attended the Dream It Be It session, and learned that more and more clubs are diving into this wonderful program. However, out of the 78 clubs only 9 had submitted their evaluation and report forms, and I was busting with pride when the list was displayed in the power point and there was La Grande. Way to go Fam and her wonderful team!

The DIBI Curriculum is being revised to include more technical training, not just focusing on college as the only goal for our young girls. They also encouraged us to open our DIBI session with an open discussion on confidentiality – that we are providing the girls with a judgment free space, even going so far as having everyone take a pledge to not judge anyone or anything they hear that day. Girls are encouraged to set their own guidelines. It’s still a mixed bag – some clubs prefer the one-day session, while others prefer the whole seven-week course.

I also attended the “How Does Your Garden Grow?” session led by Marti and Kristi. This dealt with basic essentials needed to help our clubs grow and survive. We discussed active listening techniques and qualities we need to nurture to become outstanding leaders.

The Live Your Dream Luncheon featured outstanding young women honored for their many accomplishments in overcoming

One of my favorite portions of each region conference is the Yellow Rose Ceremony which honors our members who have passed away. Club representatives walk in single-file holding a rose representing their lost member. It was so startling to see one member with five roses, and many others with two or three. They all place their roses in a single vase and then we all cry silent tears as the deceased members’ pictures and years’ of club service are displayed.

Attending district and/or region conference puts everything into perspective – helping us see the bigger picture and why we all work so hard on our local programs and fundraisers. I strongly encourage all of you to sign up to go to our next district conference which will be nearby at Wildhorse Resort in October. The next region conference will be at Lake Washington in April 2020, and our own Kristi Puckett will be installed as our next Region Governor at that time.

Membership Mojo – This was an interesting session in that the room was filled with about 65 to 75 members. The group leaders started the meeting by asking the attendees to move into smaller groups by age – the first group were those members who were 39 years old or younger (4). The next group was 40-59 years old (about 15), and the last group was 60 years or older (a huge majority).

Each group was asked to brainstorm on the following questions.

1. Why are you a Soroptimist International member?
2. What do you find challenging in your club?
3. What do you find engaging about your club?

The groups then reported back. It was very interesting to see what members had to say. I would say that it is safe to say other clubs struggle with the generation gap more than ours does. As a member of the Recruitment and Retention Committee, I would like to do some form of this activity to see if we in fact have some of these same issues. It was a good session.

Imagine Life Without Violence

I learned about under-utilized SI grant opportunities for Imagine Life Without Violence events. They are looking for events with hands-on participation that raise awareness or increase awareness of SI and have measurable outcomes.

Oregon has one of the highest occurrences of human trafficking – this workshop talked about different kind of events to bring awareness to violence against women and girls.

Our keynote speaker on day 2 was Theresa Flores, a trafficking survivor with a story that was unbelievable: briefly, in the late 70’s as a 15 year old Irish Catholic girl in an upper middle class family, she was blackmailed by a fellow student, and was trafficked by this fellow student for 2 years, sneaking in and out of her own home to protect her family from the shame the blackmailer threatened.  She has now begun a program called SOAP where bars of soap with information on how to contact and get help are placed in hotels/motels.

I have talked with Baker County, and will be reaching out to Wallowa County to see if she is someone we might look at trying to bring here to talk to our high school and college students and to meet with hotel owners along the I-84 corridor.

They sell pins, first it was the shooting star, now it’s the hand. They are sold for $10 and they support Imagine Life Without Violence.

The Scholarship & Awards Committee is pleased to announce the 2019 scholarship recipients:

EOU Senior Award ($5000) –Christina Thurston

EOU Continuation Award ($3000) — Clara Gandy, Hannah Wilhelm, Carsyn Roberts, Emily Andrews

Pro-Tech Award ($2000) — Elizabeth Verhelst

High School Senior Award ($2500) — Elizabeth Babcock, Kara Gooderham, Crystal Marks, Mollie Smith, Alondra Ibarra, Alaina Carson

Mark your calendars for next Thursday, May 16th at 6:00 pm to meet our scholarship recipients at Island City city hall for our annual awards presentation!  We will present these young ladies with certificates, hear about their future plans, and enjoy cookies with good company.

SILG in May, Easy as 1-2-3!

May 2 – Board Meeting 12noon at Dennys, All Members Encouraged

May 9 – Business Meeting 12noon at Dennys, All Members

May 16 – Scholarships & Awards Reception, 6pm, Island City Hall, All Members & Recipients