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Mary Harriman
In case you missed it, Nov. 15th is National Philanthropy Day!
Junior Leaguers may not typically think of themselves as philanthropists, although what we do here meets Wikipedia’s etymological definition of the term as “the love of humanity” as well as…
Healthy kids are a good thing, right?
Sure. Next question. Well, the next question is, what can we, as a volunteer organization and as individuals, do to achieve that worthy goal? With the approach of Child Health…
It’s official: Mary Harriman is on the National Women’s History Museum website
While the National Women’s History Museum is still waiting for a permanent home in Washington, DC, Mary Harriman has found a home on its website, where she joins other Junior…
The Junior Leagues Look Back on 110 Years of Members’ Civic Leadership
In 1901, 86 years before Congress formalized Women’s History Month and 19 years before American women were given the right to vote, a young New York socialite named Mary Harriman had an…
So who was Mary Harriman’s best-known friend?
It’s a good bet that she was Anna Eleanor Roosevelt. While credit for the founding of The Junior League rightly belongs to Mary Harriman, she was supported in its early…
The Junior League: 100 Years of Volunteer Service, Chapter 2
Chapter Two of The Junior League: 100 Years of Volunteer Service, entitled “Igniting the Junior League Movement,” is next up in our handy online curriculum of required reading. The chapter…
A Q&A with AJLI Executive Director, Susan Danish
When Executive Director Susan Danish arrived at AJLI in 2003, she brought with her more than 20 years of marketing and management experience in both the business and nonprofit sectors,…
Happy 129th Birthday, Mary!
You know her as the founder of The Junior League. And it’s a remarkable story. At 19, a young New York debutante, daughter of one of the richest men in America, mobilizes a group of 80 other young women, hence the name “Junior” League, to work to improve child health, nutrition and literacy among poor immigrants living on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
Girl…How Things Have Changed!
Eleven decades ago, when Mary Harriman and her fellow Junior Leaguers wanted to communicate, they likely sent a telegram or picked up a telephone receiver and asked an operator to dial an alpha-numeric code — “Murray Hill 2977” was the code at the New York City office in 1914 — over a crackly line. That is, if they weren’t dispatching a manservant to hand-deliver a handwritten note on parchment sealed with wax.
Empty Backpacks on the First Day of School?
Back-to-school inevitably brings a bit of anxiety for both parent and child. For the kid, summer’s almost over. For the parents (let’s face it, usually the mom) there’s the stress of shopping for back-to-school supplies.
So in a perfect world, Junior Leagues wouldn’t have back-to-school programs because every kid would have parents who can buy a backpack’s worth of school supplies.
But this isn’t a perfect world.