Soroptimist International of Los Angeles
ACTION SPEAKS LOUDER THAN WORDS
April-May 2015                                                                    Vol. 6, Issue 6

A GALA EVENT

SILA’s LIVING YOUR DREAM Award Luncheon on March 21 at the Los Angeles Athletic Club with our exceptional winners and beautiful music was a very special event.
 

Barbara Jury’s grand-niece, Katelyn Vahala, played the piano during the Silent Auction. She is attending USC on a full music scholarship and everyone gave her a heartfelt ovation.
 
The Program started with an exceptional musical group: Mak Grgic playing the guitar and Katja Koren providing the singing.
  

The Award Ceremony was presented by Daphyne Howell, Event Chair, with the following winners:

There were two winners of the 2015 SILA Graduate Fellowship Award.

Fellowship Chair Joan Johnson  presented Danielle Breski. Ginger Cole congratulated Gianna O’Hara.


Living Your Dream Award honoree Jacqueline Tomines was introduced by LYD Chair Teresa Harvey.
 
Jeri Durham introduced our Community Hero Award winner and a very moving video on the life of our honoree, Dr. Sharon N. Jacques-Rabb, Founder of Center for the Empowerment of Families. Dr. Jacques-Rabb died of breast cancer last year and her award was accepted by her daughter, Renee Curry.
 
Members of SILA thank you for all the hard work. It was a joyful day!
 

MEET OUR NEW MEMBER: SUNNY-KIM BARDEN

Sunny-Kim Barden was born in Seoul, South Korea, but she is virtually a native of Los Angeles. Her father moved their family to Los Angeles when she was 2 years old so that she could have a better education.
 
After attending Taft High School, she got a BA in English Literature from UC Irvine and a Masters in Education from Cal State LA. She taught English as a Second Language to adult immigrants through LAUSD for 20 years.
 
After watching her father fully recovered from a stroke with acupuncture treatments, she became interested in Chinese medicine. In 2014, she got a Masters from the Royal University and became a licensed acupuncturist. She is now working on her Doctorate in Portland, Oregon.  She is setting up her practice in West Los Angeles.
 
Sunny and her husband are currently living in different parts of the West Coast, Sunny staying with her mother in LA while her husband prefers the more rural life and employment in Portland, Oregon. Not having kids makes this separation a little easier.
 
Sunny heard about Soroptimist through her instructors in school. She is delighted to now be a part of SILA and is anxious to become active in our many service projects and activities.

 

CONGRESSIONAL AIDE SHARES INSIGHTS
by Carole Oglesby, Program Chair

With the 2014-2015 Club year drawing towards a close, the meetings continue to be graced with exchanges with guests from differing perspectives all over Los Angeles. On “tax night”, instead of worrying about whether we got everything we needed to into the IRS, SILA was fortunate to share the evening with an honored guest from the office of Congressman Adam Schiff, Pamela Marcello.
 
Ms. Marcello joined in our tradition of self-introductions at the beginning of the meeting.  Along with listening to each person’s introductions, Pam asked some great questions that drew out a great deal of detail that even other members had never heard before from our own colleagues.
 
She described how she herself had been very active in the music industry until a combination of the general economic downturn and the massive changes in how everyday people consume music left her “high and dry.” Amazingly, she ended up joining the staff of Adam Schiff and is now his main aide for citizen services.
 
She described the primary services available to all citizens in the Congressman’s District. She especially invited SILA to nominate someone next year for the Congressman’s special “Women of the Year” recognition dinner.
 
As a special informative experience for Ms. Marcello, member Daphyne Howell gave a brief report on 1736 Family Crisis Center and SILA’s unique association with 1736. In addition, Teresa Harvey and Jeri Durham gave sketches of our two major award winners this year.

The Camino Real Region Spring Conference was held April 24-26 at the Long Beach Marriott Hotel.
 
We had 10 SILA Members attending: Governor-Elect Ginger Cole, Conference Coordinator, Sheila Tatum, Joyce Jacob, Daphyne Howell, Bev Johnson, Diane Vernon, Jessica Washington and new members Lessie Caballero, Amy Poulos and Sunny-Kim Barden.
 
We attended interesting workshops on Friday and Saturday was our Camino Real Region Business Meeting. Our three delegates were Joyce Jacob, Bev Johnson and Jessica Washington.
  
And SILA was a winner – several times!

• We won 3rd place for the Governor’s Award. It was very special to receive this award out of 25 Clubs.
• The Celebrating Success Award was presented to SILA for the award winning project “Bringing Anti-Violence Message to Teens”. Bev Johnson wrote on this project for the Celebrating Success Award.
• 5 SILA members won Distinguished Soroptimist Recognition: Daphyne Howell, Sheila Tatum, Emily Dell, Barbara Jury and Carole Oglesby
• And finally we won a large gift basket in the Club drawing for Fund Raising Giving Program.

Everyone had a wonderful time in a beautiful setting and meeting wonderful women working on the same mission.