Imagine this scenario: A 16-year-old high school student has dreams of attending university. She’s always loved science and math, and thinks she’d like to be an engineer or a computer scientist. No one in her family has ever gone to university. Her parents are supportive of her dreams, but they don’t have the money to pay for tuition and residence. She’s been working at McDonald’s part-time for the past 2 years, while also maintaining an A average.
Here’s another scenario: A 35-year-old mother of two children under ten works at her local Food Basics. Most of her pay goes towards the mortgage and bills. Her husband is emotionally and verbally abusive, especially when he drinks. Last night, he slammed her into the wall. She’s scared and wants to leave, but she hasn’t been able to save very much from her paycheck. She’s heard about Gillian’s Place, and after a Google search, gives them a call.
What do these two scenarios have in common? They both involve women who are taking action to improve their lives, action that is based on hope. What else do they have in common? These women, or women like them, benefit from the actions of CFUW St. Catharines. Our actions are also based on hope – hope that the fundraising we do, the scholarships and charitable donations we provide, can improve the lives of women in our community.
Hope is a foundation upon which humans build their lives. It’s even embedded in our language: “Hope springs eternal”; “Where there’s life, there’s hope”; “Hope for the best”. Think of how often we begin sentences with, “I hope…”. We seem to have an innate understanding that maintaining hope, even in the darkest of situations (especially in the darkest of situations) is essential to surviving and thriving.
Science bears this out. Articles about hope emphasize the difference between wishing and hoping. Wishing is passive; when we wish for something, we want it to happen without any action on our part. Hoping, however, is the belief that we can take actions to achieve what we want; we hope for something, which causes us to look for pathways and actions that will lead to what we’re hoping for. Research shows that people who maintain hope have lower rates of depression, anxiety, and stress. They also have improved immune function, better heart health, and lower blood pressure. Hope increases resilience and provides motivation. For more in-depth information about the science of hope, check out these articles: Hope as the Antidote and Hope is the Key to a Meaningful Life.
This year’s International Women’s Day, on March 8, has as its theme ‘Give to Gain’. The IWD website invites us to imagine a gender equal world – something women have long been hoping for and fighting for. Their ‘Give to Gain’ campaign encourages many forms of giving: “Whether through donations, knowledge, resources, infrastructure, visibility, advocacy, education, training, mentoring, or time, contributing to women’s advancement helps create a more supportive and interconnected world.” (https://www.internationalwomensday.com/) In other words, there are many pathways available to us in our hope for gender equality.
CFUW understands that connection between hope and action. All CFUW chapters share the same hopes, as stated in our Constitution. Simply put, we hope that we can promote higher education for women and advance the status of women. This hope translates into hundreds of actions across the country, from house tours, to book sales, to silent auctions, to our own Drawn to NiagaraTM, all based on the belief that we have agency, that our actions will help us achieve our goals. There are thousands of women in our community who are also taking action, based on the hope that they can improve their lives. When we add our actions to theirs, we’re helping them turn that hope into reality.