Provided by Susan Horst
BIG GOAL Success happens through Committee Involvement. Let me start by saying thank you for being an active part in making our Federation’s Big Goal a success. (Our Federation is Soroptimist International of the Americas aka SIA.) That BIG GOAL is to impact the
lives of a half million girls and women in the decade that started in 2021 going through 2031. Our BIG GOAL success is measured in three ways:
- Through our signature Live Your Dream Program which is a unique education award for women who provide the primary financial support for their families. This award gives women the resources they need to improve their education, skills and employment prospects. We honored SITD’s current recipients at our CBW event that was held April 27th.
- Secondly our BIG GOAL success is measured through our signature Dream It, Be It program which provides Career Support for Girls giving girls the tools they need to achieve their education and career goals and empowering them to break cycles of poverty, violence, and abuse.
- And lastly, our BIG GOAL success is measured by our Big Goal Accelerator Projects. These are projects beyond our signature programs (LYD and DIBI) which specifically help women and girls overcome obstacles which are inhibiting or creating difficulty in accessing educational opportunities. Examples of these obstacles are: poverty, violence, racism, teen pregnancy, being a foster care youth, trafficking, single parenting and substance abuse disorder. I have been encouraging our Board of Director’s to look at our existing programs and see how we can tweak them to align with Big Goal Accelerator Project requirements or to create totally new programs. My October 2021 SOLT went into more detail on the four eligibility components.
The majority of the programs we do with our local club, SITD, do count toward SIA’s BIG GOAL. But to make this happen, we have to do a whole lot more. This is where all of you come in. Our club structure is organized with four pillars: Membership, Public Awareness, Programs, and Fundraising. They are support each other: It takes members to implement our programs. It takes Public Awareness to bring girls and women into our programs. It takes Fundraising to support meaningful, quality Programs. And it takes Public Awareness and Members to successfully fundraise! Everything is interconnected. Each of our pillars has a board member liaison and is committee driven. You will be hearing from some specific committees later in our meeting. In other words, every committee is part of one of our four pillars.
Each Committee is comprised of an advisor, typically the outgoing Coordinator, a Coordinator or Co-coordinators, a CIT (Coordinator-in-Training) and members. Our goal is to have a full committee slate in place by the time our in-coming President and her slate of officers and directors are installed (usually the third Thursday in June.) Our board consists of a president, president elect, treasurer, treasure-elect, recording and correspondence secretaries, directors, delegate and parliamentarians. Now is the time for each of you to decide on your personal commitment to SITD for the coming year. Please don’t wait to be asked, even though that’s nice, but step forward and volunteer. On May 4th, we will have a social gathering where you will hear more about specific committees and have an opportunity to sign-up. I can guarantee you that your intrinsic reward is well worth the investment of your time and talent. Truly, we are all blessed to be a blessing.
