Peconic Bay Zonta documents its activities in annual achievement reports. The following reports capture the Zonta year from June 2020 through May 2021.
PRESIDENT'S REPORT
Overview: During the Zonta year, Peconic Bay meet or exceeded basic requirements as a Zonta club: Bylaws were up-to-date, new club officers received an orientation/leadership training, new members received an orientation about Zonta, and mentoring was ongoing. We had an annual planning retreat/meeting to set goals, and members reviewed and approved finances & budget. Peconic Bay was represented at the Governor Seminar, Area Workshop. Finally, our club contributed to the ZI Foundation.
Scholarships and awards: We continued to give two $300 scholarships to women who have completed lever 3 of the English as a Second language (ESL) course at Suffolk Community College in Riverhead, NY. Wilma Ramirez, who was born in Ecuador, and Leidy Stefanny Vaca Andreade, from Columbia, were the award recipients this year.
Our club also renewed our commitment to provide a scholarship to high school student Margarita Basurto, a talented musician who is taking violin lessons at East End Arts, Riverhead, NY.
Service: Peconic Bay Zonta continued its involvement with the Butterfly Effect Project, a non-profit community group based in Riverhead. The project helps elementary to high school age girls develop self-confidence and achieve academic success.
In the past our members have baked pies and desserts for the Butterfly girls' Thanksgiving Celebration. This year due to Corona virus restrictions, we donated and delivered various food items and fixings for the Butterfly girls and their families to be enjoyed at their Thanksgiving dinners.
At Christmas we donated holiday themed bags with knitted gloves and candy to the delight of the BEP Girls. The proceeds from our purchase was in turn donated to Habitant for Humanity.
We continued to support Blessings in a Backpack, an organization that provides food in backpacks for children on the weekends, when school meals are not available. According to the charity, the amount we donated provides enough food for weekends for one child during the entire school year. We designated that our donation go to Longwood School District, which is one of our local districts that have children in need.
During the pandemic when many families were desperate for food our club donated an additional $250 to the charity.
This report covered our service activities and noted the scholarships and awards we supported. See below individual reports on advocacy, membership and public relations.
– Annika Shapiro, President
ADVOCACY REPORT
1. During the 2020-2021 Zonta year, Peconic Bay met via Zoom seven times to discuss our advocacy actions (using Zonta's Zoom account, thank you!).
2. Peconic Bay has 10 members. Seven or eight were in attendance for all meetings.
3. In identifying issues, we are guided by Zonta initiatives and significant dates that call the public's attention to women's rights. Examples are listed below.
On 16 Days of Activism: http://peconicbayzonta.blogspot.com/2020/11/orange-world.html
On National Denim Day: http://peconicbayzonta.blogspot.com/2021/04/denim-day-peconic-bay-spans-country.html
Legislation: The International Violence Against Women Act of 2019 (S.3037 and H.R.5267): As a follow up to Peconic Bay's May 2020 post on the rise in domestic violence during the global pandemic (go to http://peconicbayzonta.blogspot.com/2020/05/rise-in-domestic-violence-during-global.html), the advocacy chair wrote to both Hawaii and New York elected officials urging their support for the bill. The bills did not pass.
NYS Senate Bill S7931 and Assembly Bill A8447 to increase age of consent for puposes of marriage to the age of eighteen: As a followup to the June 2020 Zonta Talk: Accelerating End to Child Marriage, the advocacy chair wrote to the NYS Senator Kenneth P. LaValle (who represents the geographic area of Peconic Bay Zonta) to ask for his support. The bills did not pass.
Programs: International Women’s Day: Drawing on material posted on our website for International Women’s Day (see http://peconicbayzonta.blogspot.com/2021/03/choose-to-challenge.html), Peconic Bay members emailed family and friends with this message: “March 8 is International Women’s Day. In the U.S., March is Women’s History Month. Click here for a short timeline of notable events in the progress of women’s rights and achievements. Join Peconic Bay Zonta in celebrating all women!”
One Peconic Bay member also belongs to Brookhaven Women in Science (BWIS), so she quicly posted the same text to BWIS's Facebook page. Within minutes, four other BWIS members gave the post a thumbs up.
Similarly, many friends of Peconic Bay Zonta responded to our email outreach with enthusiasm and support.
16 Days of Activism against Gender-based Violence: Two members watched the film Submission, which is about marital rape. After group discussion, we each agreed to do the following: Watch the official trailer, read the reviews and reach out to family and friends about the issue. Four outcomes are worth noting:
1. Three members had a good discussion about the film at their virtual book club meeting.
2. Our vice president reached out to Isabella Sorgi, Peconic Bay's nominee and District 3's choice for the YWPA award in 2018 (that year our vice president was serving as club president and was Ms. Sorgi's point of contact for Zonta). Sorgi was impressed with the film and promised to share the information.
3. Our club president wrote to Suffolk County Police Commissioner Geraldine Hart in hopes of arranging a talk about her work to bring justice and equality to women. When the Hart avenue proved unproductive, we decided to contact Victims Information Bureau of Suffolk in the next year Zonta year, when we hope the pandemic will be more under control.
4. One friend of Zonta commented: "Thanks for your email on marital rape. I was shocked that there were states in our country still without laws to prosecute men for marital rape. This is an important issue and I'm glad it was addressed by Zonta. It is so easy to live in our own little bubble without thought to the difficulties that some women endure."
Gender parity in elected office: In mid-year, Peconic Bay Zonta was approached by a Zontian from upstate New York who is working on a project to create non-partisan civic engagement and leadership development opportunities for teen girls, with the goal of gender parity in elected offices. The first phase is already under way: filming sites of historical significance for women's rights.
Peconic Bay discussed the project at length. Because of our collective skills and experiences, we decided we would help by creating supplemental materials to be used in conjunction with the films. More to come on this next year.
Gender equality: In May 2020, our vice president was contacted by a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, the first African American sorority in the U.S. (Vice President Kamala Harris is a member.) The AKA woman had learned about Peconic Bay Zonta by exploring our website (go to http://peconicbayzonta.blogspot.com/). She said her local AKA chapter was interested in partnering with Peconic Bay on service projects and fundraising events. With the challenges all of us have faced, it was a bright way to end the Zonta year!
– Mona S. Rowe, Advocacy Chair
MEMBERSHIP REPORT
Strategies: Peconic Bay developed a membership plan and monitored our goals to ensure progress. We gave our new member an orientation, provided relevant Zonta information through the year, and mentored our new member. As new programs were developed, we tapped into and benefitted from expertise of our members. Membership records and classification codes were maintained, as well as communication with District 3's Lt. Governor.
Recruitment: We gained a new member this year who has already become valued and active. We issued news releases about our local service projects; all included a description of Peconic Bay Zonta and a link to our website. We continually updated our website, critical because the pandemic prevented us from conducting our activities involving the public. As an alternative, our President emailed a holiday newsletter to folks on our email list, giving them updates on our activities.
In our discussions about membership during our monthly meetings, our chapter feels that we are successful being a small group, that every member is engaged and active and that we all work together to promote the goals of Zonta International.
Retention: We emailed minutes of monthly meetings to all members and kept our website up to date, providing information to all members. Several of us attended virtual meetings at the United Nations sessions and reported back to the full membership. We accommodated members' needs when conducting our virtual meetings, such as adjusting the time of our meetings for our member in Hawaii and accommodating the tech needs of a member who was temporarily in Texas. We enabled all members to attend our meetings! A special note: We provided support to a member whose illness prevented her from attending meetings. To keep in touch, we sent flowers and food. We also organized a virtual sing-along of holiday songs in December.
– Betsy Kaplan, Membership Chair
PUBLIC RELATIONS REPORT
Newsletter: We do not publish a newsletter. We are a small club with ten members, so I am the sole PR representative for our club. I write news releases, take photos and write captions for the media and our website. I also handle other publicity, such as calling media about our fundraisers and other events. I am assisted by webmaster Mona Rowe, who keeps our website up to date by posting information generated primarily by Mona and me. The website address is: peconicbayzonta.blogspot.com.
Website: As noted above, we have a website that was developed by Mona Rowe. She is quite active posting our club news and related events. I counted 20 posts from June 1, 2020 to May 31, 2021. Besides publicizing our club's events, Mona writes about organizations our club interacts with, such as The Butterfly Project and Mayan Hands. She will occasionally include an historical article of current significance such as "Timeline of Women Voting (or not) in the U.S. on Election Day," published on November 3, 2020. Mona reviews the website and upgrades it as needed.
Facebook: Our club does not have a Facebook page, but we have discussed getting one. I would need technical help to do so. I have a personal Facebook account, and I sometimes post information about our club's fundraisers, such as our annual yard sale (skipped in 2020 due to the pandemic). Mona is using her email account to send a request for donations for a music scholarship our club sponsors to 99 people she knows. She attached a YouTube video of her playing violin in the Sound Symphony to entertain potential contributors.
Social media: We do not have an Instagram or Twitter account. I would be interested in learning more about them. I would need technical help to set them up.
I did not attend the district PR workshop but would be interested in a future one.
– Diane Greenberg, PR Chair
No comments:
Post a Comment