BSP tours 2 "charities" and receives one BIG reconition

[bsp-mich24]

Hi ladies, this is long but as you will see its well worth it!

On 3/22/03 about 60 sisters including myself from the Northern CA Council (NCC) traveled to the bay area (E. Palo Alto & Santa Clara ) to visit and tour two of our philanthropies the Lupus Foundation of Northern CA and Stanford Univ. Hospital Kidney Research.

While visting at Stanford, we had a complimentary breakfast, watched a slide show of several successful kidney transplant patient before and 1 to 2 yrs post op (wow what an incredible difference) and met with the 3 doctors who do the research and see patients 50/50 with our contributions. We were told that Millan, one of the MDs has a BSP placque in her office.

Then we drove about another 25 miles to the Lupus Foundation (LFNC) for a tour. The office staff provided us with a yummy lunch and testimonies – all of the women except one all have Lupus and the exception had a friend with Lupus. You could not tell by looking at these women that any of them had Lupus. (hopefully one of the shots lands in an upcoming edition of the torchJ). Lupus affects women in their child bearing years (symptoms can start at 14/15 years of age) about 2 million Americans suffer from Lupus, for more basic information visit www.balf.org. (portion of article form website under the Gala link)
Beta Sigma Phi

Since 1985, the 15,000 California women associated with eight councils of Beta Sigma Phi (BSP) have raised an incredible $325,938 for the Lupus Foundation of Northern California. This amount includes $45,000 presented to our organization from BSP International, which is headquartered in Kansas City, MO.

"It has been so encouraging receiving their annual contributions and watching their generosity grow each year," remarked Jo Dewhirst, executive director of the Lupus Foundation. "Many of these ladies had never even heard of lupus prior to our being added to their list of philanthropic projects in 1985. Through the subsequent years their interest in lupus has grown--especially as they became aware of a number of their own members who were suffering with this disease."

“BSP will be one of three organizations to be honored in recognition of the very generous, continuing financial support of LFCN” at the Foundation’s 25th Anniversary Gala on October 4, 2003” also pulled from literature given to us Saturday.
We now have a conference room named after Beta Sigma Phi and oh course we stud around the placque "Beta Sigma Phi Room" and took pictures.

We also took several large group shots of all of us standing on the stairs indoors surrounded by a beautiful atrium (pictures and article to be sent to HQ). WooHoo to the sisters of BSP!!!