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Cast a Stone, SITD
President's Message
At our last meeting, we were treated to a presentation by Marie Colbert from Days for Girls. Her opening quote was “I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.” -Mother Teresa. I’m asking you to cast your stone and make an impact in our community. Your contribution will create many positive ripples throughout Truckee and beyond!
To accomplish our mission of improving the lives of women and girls, we need volunteers and money. It’s really that simple. Our Wine Tasting event allows us to raise money to share throughout our community and further our mission. We need you to volunteer to make this happen. That is why we are part of this incredible organization…right? SITD members, we need you now. Volunteer to serve and work at our Wine Tasting event on June 4th. Opportunities start at 1 pm in the afternoon and continue throughout the evening all the way through clean-up.Sign-upis ready for you, so please cast your stone today.
Denise Trani-Morris and the nominating committee have put together a slate of officers for nomination to our 2022-2023 SITD Board. All members are welcome to nominate themselves before or at the next business meeting. Let Denise know if you want to be on the slate for the election of new officers. In June we will install the newly elected board and they will take office on July 1, 2022.
Lisa gave Chris Seitz the You Rock Award for all her efforts on the VRA and Youth Appreciation Lunch
Wine Tasting Fundraiser
–Submitted by Marie Strassburger
We are in the final month of preparation for the very much anticipated in-person 47th Annual Wine Tasting and Restaurant Faire fundraiser. Thank you to everyone that is actively selling tickets and solicitating for silent auction items. If you need more tickets, please contact Lil Schaller. Sponsorships have been going great and a shout-out to all that made this happen. It’s not too late to solicit or give sponsorships.
For May, the big push is to ensure we have enough volunteers to have the event go off really smoothly. Please sign-up to volunteer in Sign-Ups. There are volunteer opportunities before, during and after (i.e., Sunday morning) the event. Partners and willing friends are also welcome to volunteer. Don’t forget to buy a ticket for yourself (and family volunteers) as we will all need one to attend.
Please remember, all Silent Auction items need to be given to Loretta Mullins by May 13. Sooner than that would really be appreciated for organization purposes. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me or Loretta (for Silent Auction).
Continuing Education Scholarships - Applications
due May 15th
Up to $3000
Right now our Scholarship Committee is reviewing scholarship applications for your high school graduating seniors. We have another valuable scholarship for women returning or continuing their education. That scholarship is available to women who want to improve their career opportunities through education or training. The application is on our website at www.sitd.info in both Spanish and English. Please let your friends and colleagues know about this opportunity.
Soroptimist International Sierra Nevada Region held its fabulous in-person 46th Annual Region Conference April 1-3, 2022 at the Atlantis in Reno.
It was heart-warming to finally be able to connect in person rather than looking at faces in tiny little squares for our virtual meetings. The energy in our conference room was stirring and infectious.
The conference formally opened Friday evening with a Grand March for 2020-2022 Region Board and Club Presidents. Five presidents from District 5 (the Fabulous Five from District Five) marched in the opening ceremony: Stephanie Alexander, SI Fallon; Nancy Muller, SI Tahoe Sierra, Lisa Saqui, SI Truckee Donner; Valerie Hahn, SI Truckee Meadows; and Chris Wells, SI Washoe County. President Julie Hagwood, SI Quincy, joined us Saturday morning. We also had club representatives from SI Fernley and SI South Lake Tahoe for a total of eight of our ten clubs from District 5 being in attendance. District 5 also had more participants than any other District in our Region with a total of 50 participants, a full 25% of the total conference attendees. 55 of those in attendance were first time attendees, a record for our region. SITD had seven members present. Congratulations on this wonderful show of support.
The agenda was chuck full of reports from Federation Chairs and Keynote Speakers. Significant business included the adoption of a bylaw amendment allowing clubs to extend membership without territorial limitations. This was a ‘hands-on lesson’ in active discussion and protocol for amendments to motions. Another ‘hands-on lesson’ occurred with a nomination from the floor for a District Director candidate and the subsequent balloting. Also, the Region adopted an international project in support of Ukraine refugees thanks to the courage of one member asking to speak to the room.
Congratulations go to Governor Sarah on such a successful conference that created a seamless transition back to in-person meetings, to a new SNR Board and most importantly, to a renewed Soroptimist vision. Governor Sarah’s motto for her biennium as ‘Courage and curiosity lead to dreaming, learning and doing.’ Governor Sarah was truly the epitome of this as she courageously led us through the Pandemic and beyond.
On April 27th, 2022 we honored high school students from Truckee High and Sierra High with a Youth Appreciation Lunch (YAL). This year we were able to have the event in Dana Frank’s Culinary Classroom at Truckee High School (THS).
We celebrated students from both Truckee High School and Sierra High who were chosen by the school department heads and teachers for the students’ interest and involvement in selected areas of study, not necessarily academic or athletic. While enjoying a pizza lunch from Zano’s, we heard many moving recommendations from teachers and we all enjoyed learning about the students’ families, hobbies and goals for the future. “I’m so honored to have been recognized for this award and I’m grateful and appreciative for the generosity in our small community. I hope I can inspire younger students to strive for their future goals.” said Julianna Martin, THS honoree. Each student was given an honorary certificate and a $15 gift certificate to Coffee Bar. Dana Frank added, “It is so nice to be able to properly celebrate these amazing students!” This year five selected students from Sierra High who walked over to THS with Alicia Gampey-Gebel, Sierra High counselor and were joined by 15 THS students. Attending Soroptimists were Shirley Phelan, Lisa Barr, Nancy Wallis, Brady McClintock, Charlene Simmons, Pam English and Chris Seitz. Soroptimist Erika Murphy, and Truckee High Culinary Instructor Dana Frank, helped us organize the program and decorate the room.
SITD has launched a new, updated website for the public with a more intuitive, responsive interface. The website continues to ensure that interested public have access to all our events, fundraising efforts and information, while highlighting our updates, news, stories and happenings in a more mobile friendly environment.
Our current board made the big decision to upgrade our public and member facing websites this January, and a small website committee was tasked with the job of transitioning and transferring our informative website over to a new all-in-one program. The committee and board chose to utilize ClubRunner for this program to help ensure that privacy, compliance and interfacing needs were met (and will continue to be met) and that new browsing features can be utilized (SEO, metatags, and more!).
ClubRunner is an award-winning collaboration tool for clubs that want to effectively: reach members, improve communication between members and public, organize their club more effi ciently. It can maintain our club data, organize events and volunteers, handle private and public documents and more. It is our hope that this program will allow us to consilodate all our web needs under one platform, making it simpler for the public and our members to access their needs. We launched our public facing website: sitd.info on April 22, in conjunction with the beginning of our Wine Tasting Event Promotion, and look forward to launching the member website: sitd.club, after our May business meeting.
Any questions, contact Katy Jones or Chris Seitz.
Thank you to Jayne Hahin who developed our original website and maintained it for years, followed by Lynette Powell, who continued to maintain and update the website and store all our critical documents. We appreciate your years of service to help SITD communicate better with itself and maintain our presence on the internet.