"How Womenade Started"
By Judy Hicks, Founder

When life hands you lemons you make lemonade, when you are a women you make Womenade!

I read that in a magazine in 2002 and said “Yes, that is it!”

I wanted a way to continue doing things for the kids at daniel without serving on a “board”. I wanted to raise money and give the kids the little things that daniel did not have in the budget. Things like a trip to the Mall, movies, baseball games, gift cards to Walmart, hair cuts, manicures, you know the kind of “luxuries we bestow on ourselves as women”.

So I though, well, if there is one thing that I love it’s to eat and see my friends and that is how it all began.

The first event was a “pot luck” at my home. I invited 50 or so women, almost all of them showed up. Everyone brought a covered dish and we said Grace, ate and enjoyed each others company. We all gave $25 and Womenade was born.

We have grown to 50-75 contributors, many of which attend the events, we have the meals catered (it is much easier on the attendees and we can cover the cost with the $5 extra charge).

Since September 2002 we have accomplished so much for the kids. We created the “daniel A’s”, a very special group the kids can belong to. Daniel A’s are any child at daniel and get no F’s on their report card and at least one A. They go to dinner with us and celebrate with the other daniel A’s and staff from daniel and they get a $10 gift card. If they make the A/B Honor Roll they get a $50 gift card. It is a lot of fun for the Womenade attendees because we get to celebrate something good in their lives and encourage them to keep studying and reaching the goal of achieving A’s. They receive the gift card, a letter from Womenade and a certificate that they can hang on their wall.

Our dollars have underwritten the cost of school uniforms, play stations and games, Junior Roar cheerleading camp, contact lenses, concert tickets, spring break outings at Adventure Landing, a trip to Disney (this was the first time most of the kids had ever seen Mickey Mouse!), summer camp that included horse back riding, movies, lunches and ball games, Graduation dinners, winter coats for every kid at daniel and the various office equipment that the cottages need from time to time.

In all we have raised over $40,000 in the past 4 years!