SARATOGA SPRINGS — Loosely translated from Latin, the term “Soroptimist” means “best for women.”
The phrase is a benchmark for success used by Soroptimist International of Saratoga County, which is marking its 30th anniversary as the local chapter of the professional women’s service club.
“We work to improve the lives of women and girls locally and throughout the world,” said 2009-10 club president Jovanka N. Harrison, a Saratoga Springs resident and research specialist for the New York State Cancer Registry.
They do it by raising money, contributing funds and rolling up their sleeves, providing public service in a spirit of camaraderie.
In the 2008-09 year, the club raised more than $24,000, the majority of which was distributed to nonprofit organizations and award recipients, including female heads of households pursuing an undergraduate degree.
For the past four years, the local club and Domestic Violence and Rape Crisis Services of Saratoga County have been working together to give women the tools to obtain financial and legal independence through a free eight-week program called Project Hope and Power. Soroptimist members volunteer as program facilitators and mentors, and also baby-sit for the children of the women attending the classes.
Harrison, who joined the club in 2004, said her aim as president in 2010 is to make a greater impact on the community through the club’s ongoing signature service projects and by surpassing fundraising levels.
The two major annual fundraisers are the Cabin Fever luncheon, which will next feature Virginia G. Drachman, author of “Enterprising Women: 250 Years of American Business,” on Feb. 6; and the Secret Gardens Tour on the second Sunday of July.
A longtime member and former chairwoman of the Secret Gardens Committee is Saratoga Springs resident Mary Caroline Powers, who has been a Saratoga Soroptimist member since the club’s second year.
“I felt very strongly that I needed to engage in the civic life of the community that I was living in and raising my children in, and this was a wonderful way to do that,” said Powers, who joined the club after giving birth to her third child, who is now a married mother of two.
Powers is vice president for communications and government relations for Empire State College. She and Harrision are among about 60 business and professional women in the local club, which meets monthly for dinners and programs at the Saratoga Golf and Polo Club and distributes funding to dozens of local organizations that help women and girls. Members pay dues, attend monthly meetings, serve on committees and contribute at least 12 hours of service each year.
Soroptimist members come from a spectrum of professions — they include attorneys, business owners, members of academia, fitness instructors, financial advisers, executives of nonprofits and newspaper editors. They range in age from their mid-20s to late 60s and they include retirees, CEOs, grandmothers and young mothers. Internationally, the club counts 95,000 members in 1,400 clubs throughout 120 countries.
“Any woman who is willing to give back to the community and who has the time and the resources can become a Soroptimist,” Harrison said.
The Project Hope and Power has become a keynote program of Saratoga Soroptimists. It teaches skills like resume writing, interviewing for a job, establishing credit and managing money. The objective is to help women break free from abusive relationships.
“It gives them the emotional, analytical, financial and practical skills to venture out on their own,” Harrison said. “What’s rewarding is to see the development, the strengthening of their self-esteem during the training. It gives them the things that a lot of us take for granted.”
Harrison said the program has served about 40 local women a year since its inception four years ago. It has received acknowledgement by Soroptimists at the national and international levels in the form of $10,600 in grants. The club has also received requests to teach other Soroptimist chapters how to start their own Project Hope and Power programs, she said.
“It’s about what we can do to make a difference,” she said, adding that as a Soroptimist and a world citizen, she encourages young women to “break any ceilings that may exist.”
Soroptimist public service goes well beyond local borders. Members have been responsible for a clean water project in Mexico and introducing legislation to the United Nations about abortion rights. They have been increasing public awareness about sexual trafficking. And local members like the late Betsy Davis were in the forefront of efforts to speak out against female genital mutilation, Powers said.
“I don’t think another club would have necessarily taken up these issues,” Powers said.
She described the club’s founding members, including first president Sondra Silverhart, second president Martha Margolis and third president Linda Toohey as “cracker jacks” — intelligent, energetic, influential, fun women who were leaders in the business community.
Charter member Lisa Schroeder-Bevis, who joined the club at age 23, shortly after opening the Clothes Horse store on Broadway, said the women were connected through their desire to improve the quality of life for other women and children, and they had the resources and motivation to get things done.
The formation of their female network took place in a social and cultural environment much different than today’s.
“In ’79 and ’80, the community was just beginning to brush itself off and move forward. It was not the community it is today,” Powers said. Women were not allowed to join Rotary, Kiwanis or Lions clubs in those decades. Now, they are; yet Soroptimists still has a special appeal for women, including young professionals.
“The sharing of ideas about social concerns, and doing activities that make a difference about those social concerns is a real bonding experience,” Powers said.
For more information about Soroptimist International of Saratoga County, go to www.saratogasoroptimists.org.
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