Winter 2011 - K-Space Web Page - Central Catholic High School

decided to start a chapter together in Corvallis, Oregon, where shewas living at the time. They ran the Corvallis chapter for two yearsuntil Patricia moved up to Portland. Then Patricia started anotherchapter in Portland with two other friends, and that group hasbeen meeting now for two years. Patricia has also mentored 17other chapters as they were getting started in locations all over thePacific Northwest.Since Patricia’s involvement, DFW has tackled a variety of subjectsand learned about many countries. Educating themselves aboutthe world and the women they’re supporting is as important asthe funds they collect. Some of the programs they’ve supportedfocus on creating jobs with the help of micro-loans; providingscholarships for girls to help keep them in school; increasing thehealth of mothers and babies through safer birthing practicesand providing supplies and facilities; expanding food security invulnerable regions by introducing new uses of indigenous crops;and helping to stop human trafficking/sexual slavery by providingfunds for safe houses for the rescued girls, and education to helpthem re-integrate into society.Patricia believes that her whole upbringing as a Catholic embeddedin her the idea that we are all equal in God’s eyes, and that we mustcare for (and about) all our human family, whether they live nextdoor or a world away. The idea of empowering women is somethingthat has grown in her over the last 15 years or so, with the workshe has doneleading women’sgroups, breastcancer supportgroups (she is asurvivor herself),and domesticabuse supportgroups. Duringthe training shedid to work withdomestic abusesurvivors, she sawa video that talkedabout the womenin the past 150 years who havededicated their lives to bringing about the equality of women – fromensuring that women could own and inherit property to helping toget the vote. She realized that these changes were not all that longago.“I saw that all the rights I took for granted were won by the bloodand sweat of many women in the past, and that I was standing ontheir shoulders,” Patricia says. “I knew in that moment that mylife’s work was with women. Through DFW, I’ve learned how manywomen around the world still do not have these basic rights. I feelhonored to be a part of a group that educates women in the firstworld about these issues, while actively supporting organizationswhose mission is to bring about those rights and elevate thestandard of living for the world’s poorest women and girls.”Future PlansPatricia says that DFW is expanding its travel program this year,with trips to Peru in May and to Nepal in November. She iscoordinating the Nepal trip, for which DFW is partnering withHeifer International to visit women’s programs in rural areas of thecountry. The group will also travel with another organization theysupported in 2008, OneHeart, which helps to bring safer birthingpractices to rural women. They will be trekking to one of thevillages that OneHeart works in, and they will stay in tents and meetwith the women whose programs they helped to fund. Dining For Women’s goal is to grow to 1,500 chapters, which wouldallow them to increase support for featured programs to $2.3million each year. The organization welcomes interested women tojoin a local chapter and learn about changing the world, one dinnerat a time.