International Catholic women’s organization holds biennial convention in Dearborn
DEARBORN — Increasing membership will be the main focus of her second term as international regent of the Daughters of Isabella, Christiane Chagnon said in an interview before the group’s biennial convention here Aug. 5-8.
“The main thing is recruitment — that’s the No. 1 priority,” said Chagnon, whose expected re-election took place Aug. 6, as about 600 delegates from Daughters of Isabella circles in the United States and Canada gathered at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Dearborn.
Chagnon, 66, is a member of St. Patrick Parish in Magog, Quebec.
The Daughters still have about 60,000 members, but they are mostly in their 60s or older, she said, explaining that the group’s recent recruitment efforts to bring in younger members are beginning to show results.
Helen Anonick, the Daughters’ Michigan state regent, said the organization had suffered from an attitude of “It’s our club; we aren’t interested in recruiting younger members — the same thing that happened with the Knights (of Columbus) and with the Alhambras.”
At 43, Anonick herself is much younger than the typical member of the Daughters of Isabella, but she joined when she was 16 at her mother’s insistence. She conceded, however, that she was not much interested in it back then.
“When I was in high school, I didn’t want to be with the ladies. When I was in college, I didn’t want to be with the ladies, but after I was married and started my family, then I appreciated the chance to get out with the ladies,” said Anonick, a resident of Grosse Pointe Woods and member of St. Joan of Arc Parish in St. Clair Shores.
But any successful recruitment effort among younger women must contend with the fact that almost all of them lead very busy lives, she said: “The problem is, if you go up to a woman in her 30s, 40s or 50s, and invite her to join, she’ll say, ‘No, I’m too busy.’ If you stop there, you’ve lost her. You have to say, ‘I know you’re too busy, but …’”
Anonick said one of the great things about being in the Daughters is “because this is the one thing I actually get to do for me — everything else involves my kids or my husband.”
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But Anonick acknowledged that bringing in a younger generation of members requires some flexibility on the part of longtime members: “We have to get our members to stop saying, ‘We’ve always done it this way.’”
Or, as Chagnon put it: “You need to keep the best of the past, and try new things.”
Next to bringing in new members, the most important goal, said Anonick, is “keeping the members we have.”
“Meetings must be made interesting. You must keep the members interested and involved,” she said, adding that younger members need to provide rides for older ladies who no longer feel comfortable driving at night.
“The first step toward death (for a circle) is moving meetings to the middle of the day,” she said.
At the same time, there needs to be some creativity in making it easier for younger women to attend. “The circle in Howell provides babysitters, using teens who need service hours,” she said.
But perhaps the most important thing to keep members interested, in Anonick’s view, is “it’s got to be fun.”
“Whatever you are doing has to be fun or people are not going to spend their time and energy doing it,” she said, adding that while men who join fraternal organizations such as the Knights of Columbus might keep sending in their dues even if they are not active, “women won’t do that.”
One promising development for the Daughters is that they now have four circles on college campuses — at Harvard University in Massachusetts, William & Mary College in Virginia, Loras College in Iowa, and Benedictine College in Illinois.
Daughters of Isabella circles in each state choose a major charity project. In Michigan, it’s the Ronald McDonald House, while in Ontario it’s a treatment center for priests with addictions.
Circles may also take on other projects, Anonick said, noting that one had raised the money to put a new roof on its parish church.
“A lot of volunteer hours are done by the Daughters — over 3 million volunteer hours over two years in the community or parish,” Chagnon said. “And the ladies are very generous, donating an estimated $2.9 million in that same period.”
During the Dearborn convention, the Daughters held a walk to raise money for the Karmanos Cancer Center in Detroit.
Archbishop Allen Vigneron celebrated the opening Mass for the convention Aug. 5 at St. Barbara Church in Dearborn. The Daughters were to return to St. Barbara on Aug. 8 for the installation of officers and a Mass for deceased members to close their convention.
Besides Chagnon, other officers chosen to serve until the next international convention two years from now are: Diane Corriveau of Sherbrooke, Quebec, international vice regent; Susanne Suchy, a member of St. Pius X Parish in Southgate, international secretary-treasurer; Monique Savoie of Balmoral, Quebec, and Monique Kelly of Ajax, Ontario, international directors for Canada; Lucille Reif of Planville, Kas., international director for the United Sates.
Another U.S. international director is to be appointed at later date.
The Daughters of Isabella were founded in 1897 in New Haven, Conn., originally as a ladies auxiliary to a Knights of Columbus council. Although it was to develop as an organization separate from the K of C, Anonick said it has “sort of followed in the Knights’ footsteps.”
