On March 20, 1997, Ladies of the Heart hit the World Wide Web for the first time. It became very evident, early on, that this was something different and something that many ladies wanted to associate with on the Internet. We quickly grew our first year, and continue to add many new members each week. It's a special kind of “Internet Group” and if you were to read over our Creed and Charter, you might think the same thing. This open letter is to try to share with you, the reader, just how Ladies of the Heart (LOTH) came to be what it is today, and where the Dream is going in the future.
LOTH started much like any other women's group on the Net. Ten ladies bringing together an idea, creating graphics and music, writing a Creed and Charter for it's 'guidelines', and designing a web site to present their club to ladies on the World Wide Web. There was no advertising or search engine registrations done, we all just started inviting ladies we knew to come see this new web site. By word of mouth, we soon had a membership of several hundred. Most of the current members came to LOTH because a friend told them about us, or they saw our Logo on someone's home page.
There are activities for the LOTH members; many ways to network and meet up with each other. LOTH is a very empowering and supportive group of ladies that share a great need to reach out and help another sister no matter what the need might be. We share lots of laughs and many tears in our interaction with each other every day. We come from every walk of life, cultural background, religious and political affiliations, and every continent on the Planet! We range from 18 to over 90 years young, and represent just about every racial background you can imagine! We are mothers, daughters, wives, and sweethearts. We are housewives that stay home with the kids, Aunts and grandmothers, and professionals in many fields of the working force. We are well-to-do as well as just making ends meet. We are single, we are married, we are divorced, and we are widowed. Well, I'm sure you get the idea...we are women of the world
....Ladies of the Heart!
LOTH, the Dream is becoming more a reality now. We have all the typical functions that many groups on the Net have. We have a message board for the ladies to meet up on, a chat room, and everyone's IM #s to instantly chat with our sisters. We have a mailing, we call Bits & Pieces, where the ladies can communicate through email items of interest they have to share, prayer requests, offers of help, requests for help, or just sharing some piece of good news. This is also an avenue used to make LOTH related announcements to the members. We have Good Will Ambassadors, and a Welcome Wagon that is grouped out by Regions so that the ladies can actually get together and meet their LOTH sisters in their residing area in real life. We are making an interesting transition from the cyberworld net club to the real world gatherings of ladies all over the world!
Another part of the Dream is the actual structure of LOTH. Our purpose, or Mission Statement, covers that we are a women's organization that is designed to give women a place to network, receive and give support and help in life's issues empower women to be all they can be by this support, and to hopefully offer a safe haven so that the members can grow and learn and be proud of their creativity as women! The Dream also includes creating a foundation from which to service the needs of the LOTH members. This LOTH foundation will be for the members that might need help 'getting on their feet' after divorce (or death of a spouse), ladies who might want to return to school and finish their higher education, and/or sisters who might need some help with counseling as they go through bouts of depression or suicidal feelings. As other avenues come up to be addressed, they
would be open for evaluation for this foundation, as long as it strives toward the goal of empowering LOTH members to be creative, joyful, loving and caring sisters, in essence, to be all they can and want to be!
General membership to LOTH will always be free to all ladies that desire to contribute to this Dream by being a member. Our Creed and Charter and the poem on our front page, Sisters of the Heart spell out our requirements for membership very clearly. There may be a donations schedule produced in the near future to further assist in the creation of this foundation, and to cover the general administrative costs that any organization of this sort has. These donations would be on a totally voluntary basis, a gift from any member that might feel led to donate something towards the creation and maintenance of a 'Non-Profit Organization'. Donations will never be required of, or expected from, any of the LOTH members. In the future, it may be that Chapters of LOTH will be able to be formed and, thus, able to contribute to this Dream at the local level. With a NPO status, LOTH will also be able to actively conduct fund-raisers, in the name of LOTH, and even hope to have LOTH products for the
members to purchase in an effort to raise funds for the organization.
We have created special for LOTH only pages on a volunteer basis, and those all fall under the Welcome Wagon area. These pages address things that are helpful to the members in getting around LOTH-land, meeting each other, and networking with each other easily. The specific duties of these held offices, per se, are fairly self-explanatory by their names. All of the club functions have been originated by the ladies, as most times when a request for X, Y, or Z comes up, it is encouraged to be presented to the Review Commitee, set up with a LOTH Standard of Excellence, and then presented to the members. Many want something to do to contribute to the growth and service of the club, so new ideas and suggestions are always welcome.
I hope this gives you some basic idea of what Ladies of the Heart is all about. I had a dream to create a safe and fun place for women to come to, on the Net, to be supportive of each other, and, in essence, become empowered in their own Love. For that really is what LOTH is...Unconditional love and acceptance of a sisterhood of women everywhere. I have had many write to me, sharing their agreement to the Creed, many stating that if this Creed were lived by each and every person in the world, we would truly be a happy and healthy planet. There would be no wars or hate crimes, and there would be no prejudices or persecutions because of differences. We would have Peace, Love and Fellowship simply in the name of Love, and there would be a healing of Spirit for all people, of all religions, of all cultures. We would be able to support each other in our creative endeavors without any threat because our choices differed from each other.
I know this type of group may not be for everyone that comes to visit this website. I do thank you for coming to visit, and looking us over. For those who feel this is 'what they have been looking for', or that it feels like a home, please feel free to email me for more information about LOTH, or fill out our Membership Application Form, and join our Sisterhood.
To close, we would like to share our little motto with you, Follow your heart! This has proven to be a most rewarding 'outlook' for me, personally, and for many of the LOTH sisters, as we all reach out to create this Sisterhood we fondly call LOTH!
Thank you for letting us tell you about LOTH, the Dream.
With love and many blessings,
Phyllis
President
Kari
Founder of Ladies of the Heart, Inc.