Junior League of St. Louis: Setting the Standard for Volunteerism

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Patch.com interviews the current Junior League of St. Louis President Maureen Strasheim.

Who are We: A brief synopsis of the League, its vision and goals:

The Junior League for Women will celebrate its 100th anniversary next year. The vision of the league is serving as a catalyst for lasting community change. The focus is on volunteering and technical support to the community, protecting and empowering children and women’s health and other key issues.

Patch: How did the Junior League get started?

Maureen Strasheim: The Junior League started in New York out of the Women’s Suffrage Movement back in the early 1900s. Throughout our history, our focus has been on training women to be volunteers. There are Junior League chapters in Great Britain, Canada, the United States and Mexico with 293 Junior Leagues across the U.S.

There are 3 aspects to our mission:

• promote volunteerism

• training women to be effective volunteers

•  promote community

The training component is what really sets us apart. We have a leadership development program that we offer our members. Our training is a three year course, eight training sessions a year.

It includes things like how to establish an agenda and run a meeting, how to work with budgets, how to work with fundraising; what are community needs, how to do public relations and how to motivate members.

We average about 50 women in each training course.”

Patch: What is your main goal of the league?

MS: “We want to build civic leaders. Our graduates can go out into the community and run a non-profit (organization) or be a very effective volunteer. We have plenty of volunteer opportunities here at the League.

We just finished a partnership with Grace Hill (Health Centers). It was called “Strong Women and Healthy Family Resource Fair and it was in its fourth year. We recognized the need for low-income women to get access to a variety of needs at one location in one day. The women got a mammogram done; their teeth examined; talked to a banker how to set up an account; talked to someone from St. Louis Community College how to further their education, talked to an attorney about legal issues and meanwhile we provided child care for their children.

This was extremely successful. We had over 325 women attend that event and the feedback from them was phenomenal.”

Patch: Your family Theatre Series is one of your key projects?

MS: “Yes, we just celebrated our 25th year of sponsoring this project at the Florissant Civic Center. We noticed many years ago that the average age of a theatre goer was 60+ and we felt we needed to bring that age down.

We wanted to bring live theatre arts to school-aged children and to work on literacy. All of the productions are based on children’s literature like “If you give a mouse a cookie,” “Charlotte’s Web,” Cam Jansen books; Henry Mudge, a lot of children’s literature books and the classics.

We market to schools throughout the St. Louis area; 10 performances per day with matinees targeted to school groups. Ticket prices at $3 have been held the same the last 25 years. The challenge is for schools to find the funding for transportation.”

Tomorrow: the structure of the board, the 100th year coming up and more.