Journey Girls Make Awards to Local Women

Delegates to Journey 11 recently honored four local professional and civic leaders and philanthropists at an awards reception Sept. 11.  Journey is a week-long summer camp for middle school girls supported by the Women’s Giving Circle of Howard County (WGC).

Honorees included Valerie Bowers-Lash, Helen Buss Mitchell, Arlene Sheff and Jean Toomer. The women were presented individually designed awards to recognize each honoree’s special attributes and accomplishments.

Lash is the division chairperson for arts and humanities at Howard Community College.  In addition to being an educator, she is a producer, director, choreographer, set designer and actress.  She is the founder of Rep Stage, HCC’s resident professional theatre.

Mitchell is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Women’s Studies Program at Howard Community College. The author of  “Roots of Wisdom” she also created “For the Love of Wisdom,” a 25-lesson telecourse distributed nationally.

Sheff is has worked as a mental health provider in Columbia since 1972.  She is a founding member of the Women’s Giving Circle and created the WGC Network, which enables women to support other women in need of immediate financial assistance.

In presenting the award to Arlene Sheff, Journey delegates cited Sheff’s generosity and desire “to help people” as reasons for her selection.  Asked to provide “words of wisdom” for the young women, Sheff said, “Everything that has had meaning for me in my life has been from my heart … Have compassion for yourself and for others.”

Toomer is the founder of the Mediation and Conflict Resolution Center at Howard Community College and has served as Administrator of the Howard County Office of Human Rights and as Director of Community Services for the Columbia Association, where she helped establish the county’s first before-and-after-school care program. 

The 2011 delegates developed the awards program as part of an intensive camp experience that included workshops on self-awareness and decision making and other topics. Journey 11 was operated by Maryland Leadership Workshops, which has been providing leadership training programs for middle and high school students in the state of Maryland for over 50 years.

Twenty-six attended the Journey summer camp in 2011. Over 200 girls have completed the camp since its start in 2006. The signature program was founded and is financially supported by contributions from 900 donors to WGC.

The Women’s Giving Circle is an organization of women philanthropists dedicated to addressing the needs of women and girls in Howard County.  In addition to Journey, WGC funds scholarships for women taking job-related courses at Howard Community College, emergency funding for non-profits serving women and girls, and a variety of other initiatives to advance its mission throughout the year.

For more information about WGC, visit www.womensgiving.org.

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