Dining for Women chapter started at West Grove Meeting

*** Held monthly. For details & directions see the WQ Events page. ***

Everyone is welcome and we encourage women AND men to participate.

West Grove Meeting is proud to be hosting a new “Dining for Women” chapter! We have had two meetings so far, Sunday January 11th, the featured program was “The Collateral Repair Project” and Sunday, February 8th, the featured program was “SHE (Sustainable Health Enterprises”.

You may be asking what is Dining for Women? Here are the highlights…The organization was founded in 2002 by a woman named Martha Wallace, a nurse from South Carolina. Martha had been looking for some way to reach out that would have more of an impact than she could have alone. So, in January of 2003, she hosted a potluck dinner for her birthday and asked her friends to make a donation equal to what they would have spent if they were eating out. They raised about $700 and donated the money to Women for Women International. The group decided to meet again in a month and Martha’s friend Barb Collins volunteered to research other organizations to donate to and so began the first Dining for Women chapter. Fast forward to 2015, there are now about 400 chapters across the United States, with thousands of women and men participating! Dining for Women sponsors a new charity each month and focuses their support in developing countries around the globe.

The mission of “Dining for Women” is… “Through collective giving circles, Dining for Women inspires, educates and engages people to invest in grassroots programs that make a meaningful difference for women and girls living in extreme poverty in developing countries.”

The project to be featured in March is The Grandmother Project. In the rural area of Velingara, Senegal, young and adolescent girls face various constraints related to female genital mutilation (FGM), early/forced marriage, teen pregnancy and opportunities for formal schooling. The project will address these issues by targeting and strengthening the role of grandmother leaders to support girls’ upbringing and to catalyze community-wide change related to these critical issues that limit girls’ development and options in life.

Many programs addressing these issues narrowly focus on changing the attitudes and behavior of girls, and sometimes their mothers. The organization has identified that: a) girls alone cannot end these and other harmful practices which are dictated by collectivelymaintained social norms; and b) sustained change to benefit girls can come about only when there is change in community-wide social norms. A report by the Interagency Working Group on the Role of Community Involvement in Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health (2007) similarly states that “to ensure sustained positive behaviors among adolescents, the community must support the change”. The program will train 300 grandmother leaders who will work with 180 adolescent girls.

Why We Love This Project

DFW loves grandmothers as agents of change. This is a unique opportunity to connect two generations while seeking an indigenous solution to the challenges faced by this community. This program reaffirms the status of the grandmothers in the community and the extended family.

Bring a dish to share that is either something your Grandmother made or reminds you of her. If you feel inspired, perhaps share a Grandmother Story !

Please RSVP to Molly Wood emolly100@verizon.net if you are interested in attending so we can be adequately set-up. We provide beverages and place settings.