Six decades of service

Three women changed the Sarasota philanthropic scene 60 years ago, and today, locals are still reaping what they sowed.

The Junior League is a national women’s philanthropic organization based on a three-part mission statement: “promoting volunteerism, developing the potential of women and improving the community through the effective action and leadership of trained volunteers.”

In 1957, Bitsy Robertson, Suzanne Bissell and Marilynn Koach decided to pursue that mission locally.

“That was what we really hoped to do, to train women to do volunteer work,” Bissell said. “That’s what it has been from the very beginning and has never changed.”

The first step, however, was time consuming — getting the support they needed from local like-minded women.

Bissell, 90, wrote in a 25th anniversary column for the league’s monthly magazine, SandScript, that the three founders spent a great deal of time at Koach’s kitchen table during those early years. They sat with lists of potential members sprawled out before them beside letters from the parent organization, now called The Association of Junior Leagues International Inc., stating strict bylaws and regimens to be followed.

Once they had a well-advised plan and a list of about 150 women between the ages of 21 and 40, they sent out hand-written invitations for the first informational meeting.

That meeting was the beginning of a 60-year legacy of community service during which the Junior League of Sarasota started a nonprofit (Children First, originally Sarasota Day Nursery), helped lay the foundation for another (Child Protection Center) and participated in countless service projects that bettered the lives of some of Sarasota’s most disadvantaged residents.

One of the first service projects that Bissell remembers JLS taking on was the Library Shut-In Service during which members delivered books to people who couldn’t get to the library. Another was the Traveling Suitcase Museum, later renamed the Pioneer Program, in which members traveled to local schools to teach the history of Sarasota.

President Britt Riner notes that though JLS also does classic service projects, such as food drives, the organization’s true change-making force comes from its hands-on service work. This year, for example, JLS gave 28 slow-cooker classes to residents in need of food assistance as part of their hunger outreach program. Every participant went home with their own slow cooker and a bag of groceries to get them started on the simple, affordable entrees — by the end of May, they will have given out nearly 306 slow cookers.

One of Riner’s most rewarding JLS moments was watching a Spanish-speaking woman’s enthusiasm during one of these classes, then getting to know her in her native language afterward.

“There was just a level of dignity that was subscribed to her,” Riner said. “We weren’t just giving her food, we were giving her a skill that she could take home and then prepare [a meal] for her family.”

For Bissell, seeing the enthusiasm of the early members and their dedication to the organization was most rewarding. She remembers JLS women getting babysitters to watch their children so they could watch others’ children at Sarasota Day Nursery.

Women’s work was mainly confined to the home 60 years ago, so JLS has had to adapt to the needs of modern women — especially because Riner estimates that about 90% of its members have full-time jobs outside of the home. She said that the current need to plan meetings around full-time work schedules is one of the biggest changes in the organization.

Asked the value of looking back on the past 60 years of JLS history, Bissell’s response echoed the 2016-2017 JLS theme of “sow, grow, reap.”

“To know where we started and where we’ve come,” she said. “Have we made progress from the beginning to now? You can only do that if you look back and decide that there was an integral place for this organization.”