New Member Project

NEW MEMBER PROJECT Ready to Serve

BY ELIZABETH LOGSDON Every June 1, a group of roughly 100 women begins their new member year with the Junior League of San Antonio. The new member year is a busy and exciting time in which these ladies are completing volunteer hours, attending meetings, and learning about the inner workings of all aspects of the League. The goal of this year is to provide JLSA’s newest members with opportunities to establish relationships, develop the skillset needed to be successful throughout their League careers, and have fun!

While the general outline of the program is the same each year, it changes and evolves along with the Junior League and the times. For example, this year, new members were the initial participants in JLSA’s first virtual meeting. After several weeks of planning and testing, the main meeting was held at League headquarters, with 40 new members in the room, and was livestreamed on Facebook, allowing for several satellite meetings to take place all across the city. The livestream format was a big success and will continue to be used in the future.

Throughout the year, one of the major milestones of the program is the New Member Project. This group service effort allows the new member class to come together to complete a Done-In-A-Day Project, benefitting one of Junior League’s community partners. With that being said, on October 12, approximately 60 new members arrived at the San Antonio Food Bank (SAFB) ready to get to work for the community.

SAFB has green donation barrels placed throughout the city, where anyone can leave non-perishable food items. On this day, new members were tasked with sorting through these bins and grouping like items together based on the Food Bank’s pre-determined categories, while also checking all expiration dates. After a brief introduction by SAFB staff about their mission and the objectives for the day, the new members jumped right in—literally! Several attendees climbed into the deep food bins in order to more easily distribute the items within to their fellow members. Impressively, in just under three hours, new members sorted more than 10,000 pounds of food, which equates to more than 8,000 meals for people in need in the local community.