{"id":13975,"date":"2016-05-13T11:29:22","date_gmt":"2016-05-13T15:29:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mcreativepr.com\/?p=13975"},"modified":"2016-05-13T11:29:22","modified_gmt":"2016-05-13T15:29:22","slug":"13975","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mcreativepr.com\/2016\/05\/13\/13975\/","title":{"rendered":"Junior League hosts founders luncheon; Women\u2019s nonprofit celebrating 50 years"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"FRONT:<\/a>

FRONT: Jan Hughes, Patricia Graddy, Jane Stipe
BACK: Georgia Girardan, Ann Smoot, Beverly McNew, Mary Robinson, Gloria Fassett<\/p><\/div>\n

FORT MYERS,\u00a0Fla. (May 13, 2016) \u2013 The Junior League of Fort Myers<\/a> recently hosted a number of its founding members during a luncheon at Cypress Lake Country Club, celebrating the 50th<\/sup>\u00a0anniversary of the organization.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur focus was to encourage volunteerism,\u201d said founding member Patricia Graddy about starting the organization in 1966. \u201cWe were all young mothers at the time and didn\u2019t really have a lot of extra time, but we felt we wanted to be meaningful in what we did. Today, I think the League has come a long way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since 1966, the Junior League of Fort Myers has contributed more than one million volunteer hours to community projects and programs. Through the decades, it has made major contributions to Southwest Florida to support a wide variety of community needs including founding the Calusa Nature Center and Planetarium (1973), the Volunteer Service Bureau \u2013 Volunteer Action Center \u2013 now known as Volunteer Center (1992), Teen Court (1992) and the Women\u2019s Resource Center (1996). It has also been active in feeding the hungry in the five-county area through the food drive at its annual Taste of the Town, mentoring teenage girls in foster care, supporting self defense for women, preparing women to re-enter the workforce, creating a listening library for cancer patients, preserving historic architecture, supporting the Ronald McDonald House, distributing holiday food baskets, organizing holiday gift drives, providing gender-specific programming to teenage girls in juvenile justice, supplying backpacks to children in Harlem Heights Community and more.<\/p>\n

Since its founding in 1901 by social activist Mary Harriman, the Junior League has evolved into one of the oldest, largest and most effective women\u2019s volunteer organizations in the world, encompassing 150,000 women in 292 Leagues in four countries. Its mandate has remained the same: to develop exceptionally qualified civic leaders who collaborate with community partners to identify a community\u2019s most urgent needs and address them with meaningful and relevant programs and initiatives that not only improve lives but also change the way people think.<\/p>\n

A\u00a0member\u00a0of\u00a0the\u00a0Association of\u00a0Junior\u00a0Leagues\u00a0International,\u00a0Inc., the\u00a0Junior\u00a0League\u00a0of\u00a0Fort\u00a0Myers,\u00a0Inc. is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit\u00a0organization made up of\u00a0women\u00a0committed to promoting\u00a0voluntarism, developing the potential of\u00a0women\u00a0and improving\u00a0the\u00a0community\u00a0through the\u00a0effective\u00a0action\u00a0and leadership of\u00a0trained volunteers.\u00a0Its\u00a0purpose\u00a0is exclusively\u00a0educational and\u00a0charitable.\u00a0The JLFM is also a granting organization, providing mini-grants to organizations through out Southwest Florida\u2019s five-county area to programs that create better life outcomes for our area\u2019s youth. JLFM memberships are open to all women aged 21 and older of all races, religions and national origin who demonstrate an interest in and commitment to voluntarism.\u00a0For\u00a0more\u00a0information\u00a0about\u00a0the Junior\u00a0League,\u00a0call\u00a0239-277-1197 or\u00a0visit\u00a0www.jlfm.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FORT MYERS,\u00a0Fla. (May 13, 2016) \u2013 The Junior League of Fort Myers recently hosted a number of its founding members during a luncheon at Cypress Lake Country Club, celebrating the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,1],"tags":[2422,663,4355,3088,6274,6677,6678,6679,664,2403,6680,6681,1046,2348,1297,2882,6637,858,6364,323,3412,19,2542,4219,5429,6638,2596],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcreativepr.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13975"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcreativepr.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcreativepr.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcreativepr.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcreativepr.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mcreativepr.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13975\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcreativepr.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcreativepr.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcreativepr.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}