ALCW keeps fundraising focus local
By SARA CLARKSON
Contributor
March 20, 2012
There’s nothing mysterious or evenly
remotely esoteric about what is done with the money that the
all-volunteer Assistance League of Chicagoland West raises. The same
women who raise the money spend it and deliver it. The funds don’t go
down the road to a different community or county or region or state.
ALCW focuses on getting winter coats and
accessories to needy school kids, books to early readers and kitchen
equipment to families making the transition out of homelessness, and it
does it all right in far western Cook and near eastern DuPage counties.
“We have no paid employees,” said Diane Mzorek, ALCW’s vice president of philanthropy. “What we raise here stays here.”
Active members
The locally-focused mission and hands-on
volunteer work attracts an impressive roster of women to ALCW. The 69
women who currently comprise the ALCW membership come from Hinsdale,
Clarendon Hills, Burr Ridge, Willowbrook, Oak Brook, Western Springs and
La Grange — the same places where the coats and hats, pots and pans,
and books and crayons go.
“We have a huge vested interest in our neighbors,” Mzorek said.
Many ALCW members have previous volunteer
experience with other volunteer organizations such as the Infant Welfare
Society Auxiliary, Hinsdale Junior Women’s Club and Catholic Charities,
not to mention churches and school parent-teacher organizations, but
they find the grass-roots nature of ALCW especially rewarding.
“I think a lot of the women in our organization
know how important it is to help someone else,” said Linda Legner, an
ALCW member since 1999 who is currently co-chair of the group’s coat
drive. “It’s an amazing group of willing, intelligent women.”
While ALCW is not a social service agency, she said, it can plug into real needs in the western suburbs.
ALCW is the local chapter of the national
Assistance League, a nonprofit, community-oriented volunteer group
founded in 1894 in Los Angeles. The ALCW sends in annual dues to the
national chapter, but otherwise its funds cover some operating expenses
and then go directly back to the community.
Community projects
Every fall, more than 1,600 needy children get
new winter coats, hats and gloves through Operation School Bell. Most of
those children are students living in the same towns as the members.
ALCW raises the money, buys the coats, sorts and organizes them by
gender, size and color, and then delivers and distributes them and in
many cases even fits the children.
“It’s hard work, but it’s fun,” said Trish Reider, vice president of membership.
It is what the members find so satisfying —
actually seeing the smile on the face of a child with a new winter coat,
one that fits well.
Operation New Start supplies new kitchen
equipment to people transitioning from being homeless to having a home.
Recently Mary Parsons, co-chair of Operation New Start, and a small
group of other women scoured area stores for new kitchen necessities,
purchasing everything from a microwave oven to cleaning supplies and
measuring spoons. Each set of new kitchen equipment costs around $400,
but its benefits far outweigh the price tag, allowing families to
prepare less expensive and healthier meals.
Operation New Start currently works with eight
different agencies. So far it has provided 38 new kitchens this fiscal
year and expects to provide as many as 75.
Operation Early Reading is a program for
preschool children that encourages reading at home by providing a
backpack of early reading books in several languages, with Spanish being
the second most popular after English followed by Urdu and Vietnamese.
The group’s largest fundraiser is the annual
Books and Brunch fundraiser, which last year attracted more than 300
people. This year’s Books and Brunch is scheduled for Nov. 13 and two of
the three authors already have been selected. They are local chef Paul
Virant of Vie restaurant in Western Springs and historical fiction
author Margaret George, who released Elizabeth I: A Novel last year.
Most of this effort emanates from an
1,800-square-foot office on Ogden Avenue in Hinsdale. There, bin after
bin after bin is stacked high with coats, kitchen equipment and early
reader backpacks and books. The massive undertaking of the coat drive
taxes every inch of space in the fall. The group is currently discussing
the need for a bigger space, in the hopes that it will not have to rely
on temporary warehousing. Members would like to sort and box in their
own place.
To find out more information about how you can
get involved as either a member or a friend, friends being anyone who
would like to volunteer a few hours of time on a project-by-project
basis, visit www.chicagolandwest.assistanceleague.org or email
info@alcw.org or call (630) 321-2529.
