Intermediate League opens campaign
Longtime GFWC Intermediate League member Yolanda Cypher of Fenelton will see the new club season open from a different vantage point this year.
She will formally begin her two-year term as club president at the opening dinner Monday night at the Fieldhouse, 911 N. Pike Road, Cabot.
Cypher said, “I was installed in May. We are starting a new two-year cycle with new officers.”
Joining Cypher as incoming Intermediate League officers are: First Vice President Suzie Cammisa, Second Vice President Hollie Stevenson, Treasurer Peggy Tonini, Assistant Treasurer Patti Donaldson, Recording Secretary Edythe Kern and Corresponding Secretary Rhonda Tyson.
Cypher takes over for outgoing President Phyllis Laporte.
“The opening dinner is always on the third Monday of September, if not always in the same venue,” said Cypher. “After that, the general meetings are at 6:30 p.m. the first Monday of the month at the YWCA, 120 W. Cunningham St.
Cypher said the 62-member organization “belongs to the international General Federation of Women's Clubs.”
“We are dedicated to community improvement by enhancing the lives of others through volunteer work,” said Cypher.
She said, “In the past year, we have supported the Backpack Initiative program, the Lighthouse Food Bank, the Butler Library, VOICe (Victim Outreach Intervention Center) and we work with two other groups to plant the flower garden at the intersection of Routes 8 and 422.
“For my term, we are going to work to support awareness of domestic violence, and that primarily would be doing whatever we can do to help VOICe,” Cypher said.
“And we are also going to focus on the leadership of young women,” she said. “We hope to work with the Butler School District to choose a student in the 10th grade to attend the Hugh O'Brien Leadership Conference in June 2019 at Washington & Jefferson University and we will be financing that,” she said.
That's financing that could come from the league's annual antique show and sale at the Tanglewood Center in Lyndora.
Cypher said, “In the past year, through the antique show, we've donated $8,200 in proceeds from that show to the community.”
Audray Muscatello Yost, president of the Golden Tornado Scholastic Fund which counts the Kids' Weekend Backpack Program as one of its major initiatives and is a team leader in the backpack effort, said, “We are very grateful for the women who have been giving ongoing support of food and monetary donations since the Kids' Backpack Program started in 2015.
“Also, four of these women helped pack at McQuistion School on a regular basis and helped with Stuff a Bus at Emily Brittain School,” she said.
Cypher said she has been involved in club work since she joined the GFWC Junior Women's Club in 1980, moving on to the Intermediate League in 1999.
She said she joined in a different time, a time when people were more willing to join groups such as the Intermediate League.
“When I joined we had 100 members. It's definitely true women are busy working full time and with their families. This is an across-the-board problem,” Cypher said.
“Usually our members come from other members, but we are a non-partisan, non-denominational group. As long as you are a woman with a volunteer spirit, we are very open to that,” she said.
Because the GFWC Intermediate League of Butler doesn't have its Web page set up, she asked people interested in possibly becoming members of the Intermediate League to email gfwcintermediateleagueofbutler@gmail.com
