IMPACT
The Junior League of Austin
Bridging the Gap By creating a system that continually improves on itself and leaning into the uncertainty of the future, and fortified in the strength of our shared history, Junior League members continue to affect real and measurable change each year, not in spite of, but because of the challenges in the world around them. By: Lauren Neil-Jeffrey
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n 1901, Mary Harriman, the debutante daughter of railroad executive E. H. Harriman was witness to the plight of migrant communities in her home of New York City. She was a 19-year-old socially conscious college student, and she was determined to help. Along with a group of like-minded friends, Mary founded an organization that recognized a problem and ignited action towards solving it. Within a year, there were 80 women ready to help improve the health, nutrition, and literacy of New Yorkers on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
Mary Harriman
When the COVID-19 global pandemic threatened the mission, JLA and other Leagues around the world, knowing that their initiatives would be more essential than ever, rose to the challenge.
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These young women were quickly faced with the reality that their compassion and determination alone were not sufficient to affect change. They needed to be armed with the skills to strategize, organize, and communicate with each other as well as the people they were determined to aid. With this realization, the original Junior League was transformed from a group of volunteers into a training and service organization dedicated to the development of their community through the development of each other. From that point forward, year after year, new chapters developed in new cities. The established groups with successful models, sharing what they have learned about the deployment of resources with these added chapters, and sharing their strategies to form an alliance that broadened not only in geography but in their mission, ability, and will. In the first 20 years of Junior League, members continued to support health, nutrition, education, and promoting access to the arts. They also marched for women’s suffrage and aided the Allies in World War I by selling war bonds and serving in Army hospitals. The end of the 1920s saw Junior League women respond to the Great Depression by opening nutrition centers, day nurseries for working mothers, and training schools for nurses.
The Junior League of Austin 11
