Zonta Club of the Santa Clarita Valley awarded nearly $16,000 in scholarships and community grants at its special awards assembly May 13.

The two $1,000 and $2,000 Zonta International scholarship winners also have been forwarded to District 9, where they will be eligible for another $1,000 and possible advancement to Zonta International competition.

The local Zonta club also named club Vice President Michelle Woodfork 2014-15 Zontian of the Year, selected for outstanding service to the club and the community and to the way she represents Zonta in the community.

Jane M. Klausman Women in Business
This year’s winner of the $2,000 Jane M. Klausman Women in Business scholarship is Deborah Green, who is currently in the first year of her master’s degree program at American Jewish University. She will use her Zonta scholarship to pursue her master’s degree in nonprofit management, which she hopes to complete in 2016. She was graduated Magna Cum Laude in English Honors from Queens College in 1977.

She is active with her synagogue as both a volunteer and staff member and also has been active with the National Charity League of the San Fernando Valley and with Girl Scouts, Greater Los Angeles Council.

“After many years as a stay-at-home mom and community volunteer, I reentered the job market and made a drastic mid-life career change from the corporate world to a nonprofit organization,” Green said in her application. “My goal is to take the skills and experience I acquired working in the for-profit world and apply that expertise to nonprofit management.”

Her personal goal is to pursue her passion for community service on a professional level while putting herself in a position of economic self-sufficiency. She currently is balancing a full-time job and five evening MBA classes, while supporting her daughter’s undergraduate studies at Brandeis University in Waltham, MA.

Young Women in Public Affairs

Claire Lee (second from left) and Megan Schneider (far right) receive their Young Women in Public Affairs scholarship checks from Zonta committee co-chairs Mary Ann Dortch and Gloria Mercado-Fortine.

Zonta’s Young Women in Public Affairs Committee selected two winners this year, one $1,000 winner who will advance to District 9 competition, and a runner-up whose accomplishments are being honored with a $500 scholarship. Claire Sue Hyon Lee, a senior at Golden Valley High School this year, is the top winner. She serves as the Associated Student Body president at Golden Valley and was elected by her peers to represent all Hart District students as the student board member on the district’s Governing Board this year.

Claire hopes to study sociology “because this field is concentrated on the factors that develop society, and I believe that it is necessary to understand how our lives are structured and impacted in order to argue against or defend it,” she declared. She eventually hopes to become a lawyer and work on the “many problems and issues in our society that need to be addressed with our existing legal system.”

Her community involvement included helping with the SCV Senior Center’s Thanksgiving dinner and working with the homeless in Tokyo, Japan, through her church. She admires Malala Yousafzai’ for her activism and initiative to improve educational opportunities for young women in Pakistan. She believes that social media is a great tool to raise awareness to improve the status of women and gender equality, and has started a program using Twitter and a blog to share the word about improving the status of women and women’s rights.

Claire’s application has been forwarded to District 9, where she is eligible to win another $1,000. The District 9 winner goes on to Zonta International, which will award ten $4,000 scholarships.

Zonta’s second Young Women in Public Affairs recipient is Megan Schneider, a senior at Academy of the Canyons. After graduation, Megan plans to attend a four-year university and major in International Relations and Economics. After completing her bachelor’s degree, she is interested in pursuing a career in international service and joining the Peace Corps.

Megan is the co-founder of AOC’s International Club, a student-run group that hosts weekly meetings focusing on different countries in an effort to raise awareness and cross-cultural understanding. Megan has traveled to Costa Rica and Panama in exchange/language immersion and community service programs and has worked with orphaned and disabled children and refurbished homes in a Nicaraguan refugee camp. Other volunteer activities include the SCV Food Pantry, Project Linus’ Make a Blanket Days for children, and the SCV Literacy and Arts Festival.

Alicia Estrada (l) and Randy Wrage, son of the late Virginia Wrage, present Virginia Wrage Memorial Scholarships to (l-r) Digna Yepez, Babe Ramirez and Mari Tovmasyan. The three women will use the Zonta grants to complete their educations, allowing them to become self-supporting.

Virginia Wrage Memorial
Three women have been chosen to share this year’s $6,000 Virginia Wrage Memorial grants, given to mature women facing a life-altering crisis, who need financial support on their journey to their own financial independence.

Mari Tovmasyan is a single mother who volunteers at the Domestic Violence Center, which encouraged her to apply for the Zonta grant. After a divorce and foreclosure of her home, she knew she needed to find a job to adequately support herself and her daughter. She chose a career in Occupational Therapy Assisting (COTA) because it would help her become self-supporting while assisting those in need of therapy.

She plans to use her Zonta funds to enroll in the COTA program at Santa Ana College next fall. She currently is working on the prerequisites of Anatomy and Physiology at College of the Canyons so she will qualify for the Santa Ana College program.
The second Virginia Wrage Memorial recipient is Digna Yepez, who first heard about the grants at Zonta’s Lunafest film festival.

In the early 2000s, she faced several deaths in her family, a bout of depression and abandonment by her husband. She created a network of support by interning at Single Mothers Outreach, and also is working part time for Strength United, working with children in foster care.

She is enrolled in the Master in Social Work program at California State University, Northridge, and plans to use the Zonta funds to support her education. After graduation, she plans to pursue licensure, with a goal of opening her own consulting firm to support other professionals in the field as well as assisting home health agencies meet the special needs of their patients.

Babe Ramirez also heard of the Virginia Wrage Memorial Fund through Single Mothers Outreach. She became a single mother when her husband decided to leave her, with one son to care for. She graduated with a bachelor of science degree in the Philippines, majoring in Accounting and Laws. She worked as a staff assistant and court legal researcher at the Supreme Court of the Philippines for 22 years.

She hopes to make a better life for herself and her son by returning to school to study medical billing and coding. She plans to enroll in the nearest Tri-Country Allied School, using her Virginia Wrage grant for tuition and expenses.

Sharon Rodriguez (far left) and Suzie Alziebler (far right), co-chairs of Zonta’s Community Grants Committee, pose with this year’s grant recipents: Phillip Solomon, CEO of Samuel Dixon Family Health Centers; Linda Davies, M.S., executive director of Domestic Violence Center of SCV; and Diane Bartley, chair of the Tech Trek Committee for American Association of University Women, SCV Branch.

Community Grants
Zonta’s Community Grants Committee awarded a total of $6400 in grants to three community organizations which support Zonta’s mission of improving the lives of women and girls. The final winners were chosen from seven eligible applications received by the local club.

The Samuel Dixon Family Health Centers, Inc., will use its grant to support its program for low income women with diabetes. The program will offer routine healthcare appointments to help women manage their chronic disease, provide counseling and educational materials to assist patients, and monitor patients to achieve and maintain healthy A 1 C levels.

The Zonta grant will cover the cost of healthcare for 15 encounters/visits for uninsured low income female patients with diabetes who cannot afford to pay the minimum fee for healthcare to manage their chronic disease, according to the grant application.

The Domestic Violence Center of Santa Clarita Valley also is a Community Grant recipient this year. The center will use the grant to create and facilitate six community workshops titled “A Woman’s Way to the Law.” The center expects at least 150 women to attend the monthly workshops, which will cover such topics as self-worth and protection, understanding legal rights, applying for a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO), preparing for court dates, and a network support system of survivors, advocates and community partners to help victims of domestic violence through the healing process.

This year’s third Zonta Community Grant recipient is the American Association of University Women, Santa Clarita Valley Branch. The grant will provide two partial scholarships for girls to attend Tech Trek camp, a weeklong residential science and math camp held on university campuses throughout California. AAUW has a goal of sending 18 girls from the Santa Clarita Valley to the camps held at California State University, Fresno, in June 2015 and at the University of Santa Barbara in July 2015.
The Tech Trek camp experience is an educational enrichment opportunity for young girls who will be entering the eighth grade in the fall, according to the grant application. “Research has shown that the middle school years are a critical time to encourage the interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields,” according to the application. Several of this year’s campers have been selected because they participated in the girls robotics program Zonta sponsors at the Newhall Boys & Girls Club.

All three organizations will be asked to report back to Zonta next spring on the effectiveness of their grant-supported programs. Committee chairs for this year’s scholarship and grant programs include Gloria Mercado-Fortine and Mary Ann Dortch, Young Women in Public Affairs; Phyllis Walker, Jane M. Klausman Women in Business; Alicia Estrada, Virginia Wrage Memorial and Sharon Rodriguez, Community Grants.