About Us
RVWL Mission Statement
Ross Valley Women’s League (RVWL), celebrating its 41st anniversary this year, is a volunteer group of central Marin women dedicated to supporting Adopt A Family of Marin. RVWL organizes an annual fundraiser each fall which includes dinner and dancing, a live and silent auction, and individual and corporate sponsorship. All proceeds from the event benefit Adopt A Family.
2010 Executive Board
- President: Noreen Slivon
- Vice President/Membership: Cece McGraw
- Treasurer: Marianne Doar
- Secretary: Meredith Arsenio
- AAF Liasion: Sarah Ryan
Ross Valley Women's League Membership Roster 2010
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2010 Associate Members
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Ross Valley Women's League History
A History of the Early Years of the Ross Valley Women's League
In January of 1966, Judy Allen, a young Ross Valley mother, gathered a group of friends to hear a presentation from a volunteer at support Marin General Hospital.
All in their mid-twenties, the mothers grew enthusiastic about supporting the hospital and decided to focus on its pediatrics program. Calling themselves the Jack and Jill branch of the Marin General Hospital volunteers, they met once a month at 1.p.m., when their children were napping.
The enterprising group's first fundraising called The Night Before Christmas raised $800 big money in 1966, according to a history written for the group's twenty-year anniversary. Their energy and confidence grew and the following year, the Jack and Jill branch threw a party with no overhead, good food and booze, decorating a local car dealership's hangar-like service area, where the party was held, with trees from Eggers Nurseries.
Drink tickets cost just fifty cents apiece. The volunteers made the food themselves, including gallons of mustard sauce for little hot dogs and tons of grape jelly and ketchup sauce to dunk the meatballs in which was then considered 1960s gourmet. That party nearly tripled the takings to $2,500.
In addition to fundraisers, such as hosting a premiere of the movie Papillon, the group threw holiday parties for the kids in the pediatric unit of the hospital. Christmas morning, the kids on the ward awoke to stockings from Santa.
They also started a VIPP program (short for Very Important Pediatric Patient) to lead tours of the pediatric unit for children who were facing stays there.
Over the years, the parties got bigger and more elaborate. In 1987, the Jack and Jill branch threw a black-tie Orient Express fundraiser at Larkspur Landing, with a grand prize of two round-trip airline tickets to London.
Two years later, the group changed its name to KIDS W-A-Y (Women's Association for Youth) to better reflect its continuing support of Marin General and its new association with the hospital's Adolescent Recovery Center.
In 1990, the enterprising women of KIDS W-A-Y convinced the well-known movie critic, Roger Ebert, to star at their fundraiser, which that year was held at the Portman Hotel in San Francisco.
The evening wasn't entirely a success. The Marin Independent Journal reported that Ebert, who was himself a recovering alcoholic, expounding on the addictive habits of Charlie Chaplin, W.C. Fields, and other stars, while guests sipped wine and cocktails.
Roger Ebert's talk notwithstanding, the group continued to throw fabulous parties with plenty of good cheer. So much so that so that in minutes of its June, 1995 meeting following a very successful fashion fundraiser for 225 people, the secretary noted that 5 cases of wine were consumed and the dessert, it was noted, was a little too elaborate.