by Stacey Paretti Rase
The Junior League of Greater Covington has much to celebrate this fall, as the organization’s popular Harvest Cup Polo Classic commemorates its 10th anniversary. More important, though, is the celebration of the 200,000 volunteer hours and nearly one million dollars that the group has donated to the northshore area over the past 28 years. The JLGC has tremendous “woman power”—close to 200 active and 150 sustaining members. They have changed the landscape of our community over the years by advocating in the areas of children and families, the cultural arts, education, the elderly, the environment, parenting, and substance abuse awareness.
“Our members have helped to build Habitat for Humanity homes, walked alongside special-needs children on horses during sessions at New Heights Therapy Center and brought the spirit of Christmas to adolescents at Southeast Hospital,” says President Rebecca Dougherty, describing just a few of the organization’s projects. The League volunteers with other community programs, such as Covington Early Head Start and the YMCA Child Development Center. Members have also designed signature projects such as Prime Time Seniors, which offers companionship and support to residents of the Christwood and Southerland Place assisted-living facilities; Career Closet, which provides low-income women with clothing appropriate for entering the workforce; Art Carts, which helps to make hospitalization a more positive experience by offering art programs to young patients; and their newest venture, the development of a children’s museum for the northshore.
“This past year, our dollars provided 28,000 PRIDE red ribbons to St. Tammany school children to promote drug awareness and helped to fund a child-friendly room at the St. Tammany Parish Justice Center so that children who must go to court will have a safe place to wait while they’re there,” says Dougherty. “These things would not be possible without the untiring efforts of our members.”
Kim LaNasa and Lendon Noel, 2005 polo event chairs, share Dougherty’s sentiments. Each volunteered many hours in various community projects before deciding to work in the fund development side of the League. “I’m finding that philanthropic solicitations are easy when you are passionate about the cause,” says Noel. She says she truly enjoyed her previous work tutoring students at Madisonville Elementary School during the Helping One Student to Succeed program.
“When I became a member, I thought I had a perfect understanding of what the Junior League stood for, but until I actually volunteered my time, I didn’t realize the difference we can make serving our citizens in need.”
LaNasa speaks fondly of her past volunteer work at The Parenting Center. “I was trained to meet with new mothers at the hospital. I discussed everything with them from how to sooth a crying baby to educating them on parenting classes offered in the community.” She says that she has a unique perspective on the purpose of the polo event and can appreciate how the money she is helping to raise funnels directly back into the community. Her goal is to ensure that the event is not only enjoyable for its visitors, but also financially successful. “I have seen first hand where the money is spent,” she says. “For instance, during my four years working with The Parenting Center, the League often provided money to needy families for car seats so that infants leaving the hospital would be safe. Those types of small gestures go widely unnoticed, but are extremely important.”
Actually, most works of the League are done behind the scenes. Case in point: the group’s involvement with the Children’s Advocacy Center Hope House in Covington. The facility is child-friendly and designed, staffed and equipped to provide comprehensive and coordinated multidisciplinary services to child abuse victims and their families. Hope House provides an appropriate environment for authorities to obtain interviews from physically and sexually abused children, which can later be used as testimony in the courtroom.
Hope House Director Dorothy Garcia says that the League volunteers are the only ones they have, and that the women do work that is “unglamorous,” such as answering phones, shopping for office supplies, sorting stuffed animals for the children, and conducting computer research on the disposition of past abuse cases in the parish. “The staff takes deep breaths just knowing that they’re here,” says Garcia. “Sometimes we just ask them to run errands for us so that we can focus on the kids.”
She also describes the League volunteers as Hope House ambassadors, in a sense, as they take what they see and learn at the facility and educate others in the community on the facts concerning child abuse on the northshore. “These kids who have been horribly abused walk through our doors, and [the volunteers] see that they’re normal kids, just like their own. They relate this to their families, churches and play groups. You can’t put a price tag on that.”
Alicia Moore, the League’s head volunteer at Hope House, says that she has been inspired by the wonderful work she has seen there, but is also saddened by the reality of the victims. “They are so young, so innocent, and so many. But I find it very gratifying to think that what they do at Hope House makes it easier for these children to come forward and get the help they need. When a victim comes forward and a perpetrator is stopped, future victims are also saved.”
Garcia feels truly blessed to have help from women, such as Moore, who realize that dealing with child abuse is not an easy subject, but one that must be faced head-on in our community. “I remember when the League told me of its membership requirements and that all of their volunteers must be at least 24 years old. I thought, ‘Twenty-four? What was I doing at twenty four?’ To see what the Junior League is fostering with the leadership of such young women is just incredible.”
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