By Nicole Heubusch
Located in Wimauma, the Valencia Lakes West Women’s Club is an organization that focuses on philanthropy. It has many different fundraisers throughout the year and helps out the community in numerous ways. One of its main goals is providing scholarships to senior high school students. This year marks the fifth year that the Women’s Club has given out scholarships to seniors at Lennard High School and they are hoping to launch a new goal this year: renewable scholarships.
The Women’s Club is happy to help out a student during their first year of college, but it wants to do more. It wants to try out their new program of “adopting” a student. Once it has picked a student to receive its scholarship, it wants to keep in touch with them, to hear how they are doing throughout their first year in college and hear their goals and renew their scholarship the next year.
Another charity the Valencia Lakes West Women’s Club likes to support is the Haley House Fund, which is to help homeless women veterans returning from combat. It is hosting a tea party later this year to raise money for this charity. This year it would like to invite some of the women veterans to the tea party and hope to get donations of things like toilet paper, tissues and other toiletries that they and their families need.
The Women’s Group even received a grant from the Tampa Bay Community Foundation of $7,500 and put that towards the many different charities it supports. This past January, it donated $10,000 to Moffit Cancer Research and it is estimating being able to give $10,000 in scholarships to some of the seniors at Lennard High School.
“Valencia Lakes West Women’s Club is a part of a caring and giving community. We really do put the ‘fun’ in fundraising,” said Patty Hibsher. “Our mission is to give assistance to those in need.”
Thursday, March 13 the club will be hosting a men’s fashion show to raise money to put toward the scholarships.
For more information, contact the Valencia Lakes West Women’s Group at www.facebook.com/vlwwc or call Patty Hibsher at 561-715-3000.
