Everyday people like you and me can have a huge impact on our communities, just by being willing to step up when the need arises. These 10 women, who together form the Fabulous Ladies Book Club in their small town of Ruidoso, NM, all pitched in their time, energy and skills to vaccinate over 30% of their town’s population as of the time of this writing.
The actual vaccinations are done by medical professionals, including book club member Dr. Keri Rath. That leaves the non-medical volunteers with the tasks of handling the logistics like sign-ins and waivers, spreading community awareness of the program and assisting with appointments (including offering technical support for the town’s elderly residents). The book club members stepped up and filled the roles that were needed while balancing their own lives. They gave the gift of themselves to their community and demonstrated that you don’t need specialized skills to be useful, you just have to be willing to show up and help.
Their inspiring story even touched the heart of our 44th FLOTUS, Michelle Obama, who shared the link to an article about them. The book club’s final in-person book before lockdown was her autobiography, “Becoming”, which, coincidentally, Bliss co-founder Ruth* just finished reading last week. The book details Obama’s life story and, in the telling, gives the reader example after example about everyday people having an impact on their communities. It isn’t much of a surprise, then, that the book club members recognized an opportunity to have an impact when it popped up. When people feel empowered to help, everybody wins.
(News source: Michelle Obama on Facebook)
*in another fun, small-world, coincidental twist (and in the interests of full transparency), Ruth is personally connected to one of the members of the book club through a sibling and a close college friendship ❤️
