Women & Girls Fund’s 11th Annual Spring Luncheon
Women & Girls Fund Recongizes for All Seasons
5/1/13 By Bethany Zegler @Bethany_StarDem
EASTON — During a luncheon at the Tidewater Inn on Monday, April 29, the Women & Girls Fund of the Mid-Shore awarded more than $36,000 in grants, and gave out its annual award to the five founders of For All Seasons Inc., which serves the Mid-Shore counties as a provider of mental health programs and services, and as a rape crisis center.
Joy Price, Maureen Jacobs, Nancy Wilson, Kathleen Francis and Janet Pfeffer each received the Women & Girls Fund Award for their work and were applauded for their efforts by those in the room, and especially Women & Girls Fund board president Elizabeth Spurry, who said For All Seasons is a perfect example of the purpose of the fund.
“Our mission is to use the power of pooled resources to improve the lives of women and girls on the Mid-Shore,” Spurry said.
For All Seasons sprang from a graduate school paper written by Price and aided by Wilson, who was her advisor at the time. The idea was to create a nonprofit agency in a rural community dedicated to support victims of sexual abuse. From there it turned into a place that was willing to help anyone, regardless of ability to pay.
“When For All Seasons started I said we could do anything social work could do,” Price said. “We could even help little green men adjust to life on Earth.”
Today For All Seasons has more than 30 staff members, offices in each of the five Mid-Shore counties and provides services 24 hours a day, seven days a week, year-round.
The luncheon, the fund’s 11th annual, also served to recognize each of the 2013 grant recipients. Fifteen organizations were recognized and awarded a piece of more than $36,000 to help with their efforts to assist women on the Mid-Shore. Spurry said this year many of the grants related to education.
“We think of access to education as a right in this county. But it’s really a privilege,” Spurry said. “(Education) opens a girl’s mind to the possibility of change.”
The organizations awarded grants from the fund are: CASA of Queen Anne’s and Kent counties, Chesapeake Multicultural Resource Center, Community Mediation Upper Shore, Corsica River Mental Health Services, Dixon House Independent and Assisted Living, HomePorts Inc., Ladies of Nia Inc., Mid-Shore Community Mediation Center, New Beginnings Youth & Family Services, PageTurners, Partners in Care Talbot County, Phillips Wharf Environmental Center, Healthy Families Queen Anne’s and Talbot counties, Rebuilding Together Caroline County and Rebuilding Together Kent County
