We hope you will join us and CEO, Marina Park to see how your investment in Girl Scouts is truly changing lives! RSVP to one of our events below by October 30 to ensure you receive your complimentary Tea Party Gift Box to be used during the event.

We are excited to announce our Bistro Bag fundraiser is now available for purchase! The Bistro Bag is a meal kit prepared with recipes from our very own Soroptimist member, Chef Ann Leon, and will be filled with fresh, local, in-season ingredients for you to prepare a unique at-home culinary meal in your kitchen. The kit will include a step-by-step recipe card and a special YouTube link for a cooking class led by Chef Leon. The meal for our Winter Bistro Bag and cooking class is a Raviolo dinner and will include a brussels sprouts appetizer and a winter green salad. Vegetarian options are available and you get a choice of a 2-serving or 4-serving kit. We also have dessert and wine add-ons for an additional cost. Go to bistrobag.org for more details on the menu and to order your meal kit now – quantities are limited so don’t miss out on our Winter Bistro Bag, available for curbside pick-up on Saturday, December 12^th!

I had a wonderful opportunity to visit one of our senior members, Vilma Starnes, and had her reflect on her memories of Soroptimist over the years. First, a little bit of history. Going back, way back, her mother immigrated to the U.S. from Germany in 1923 and her father from Switzerland. Here in the U.S., they crossed paths and the rest is history. Her parents started a bakery in Oroville, the Log Cabin, and it became quite successful. So successful, her parents opened another bakery in Chico that quickly expanded to seventeen delivery trucks and delivered all the way to Oregon.

Her mother first joined the Soroptimist in 1931 at the Oroville charter and became president in 1946. Vilma was born in 1927 and lived in Oroville a short time before moving to Chico with her parents in 1933. There she graduated from Notre Dame High School (where Doris Arbuckle and her were friends) and later was enrolled at Stanford University for a short time. She quickly realized college was not a place she wanted to be, so she settled down and married her high school sweetheart in 1946. They started a business together, Butte Roofing Company, where she took care of things in the office while her husband did the manual labor. In between helping run her family business, she felt she was missing something in life and decided she would join the Soroptimist in 1967. She stated “I was very shy and it brought me out of my shell”. After a few years, and like her mother before her, she became president in 1973. I asked what some of her more fondest memories were about being a Soroptimist and she quickly replied the friendships and professionalism. She went on to say being president was the most inspiring with a lot of hard work…”it does more for you than you do for the club”. As she reminisced more, she talked about helping women after they were released form jail and aided in their return to society. Then an old song the Soroptimists use to sing came to mind and gladly broke out in song with he following: