Women's Symposium on Service

The San Marcos Lions Club and Hays-Caldwell Women's Center joined together on International Women’s Day last week to host a Women's Symposium on Service at the San Marcos Activity Center.

Every sitting councilwoman and Mayor Jane Hughson were in attendance, as well as women representatives from many of the areas nonprofits and community organizations, including CASA of Central Texas, Community Action, The Kiwanis Club of San Marcos, Mermaid Society, School Fuel, the Youth Service Bureau and many more.

Women leaders from all facets of the San Marcos community were invited to lunch, listen and learn from each other the important work being done in the area to fill community needs.

Event organizers included San Marcos Lions Club President Samantha Armbruster, Hays-Caldwell Women's Center (HCWC) Executive Director Marla Johnson and HCWC Director of Development and Community Partnerships Melissa Rodriguez.

San Marcos Lions Club President Samantha Armbruster said the Lions Club and Hays-Caldwell Women's Center set out to to establish a space for women community leaders to network and leverage knowledge and passion to address community challenges.

Formed in 1942, the San Marcos Lions Club has been an organization committed to serving the community, with over $350,000 given back through service projects, scholarships and grants to local nonprofits. The Lions Club, like many organization, didn’t allow membership for women until 1987. Since then, women have became an integral part of the organization, and are now considered the fastest-growing membership segment by Lions Club International.

Armbruster opened up the symposium talking about now being the time to hold a women’s symposium because women, especially on a local level, are becoming a larger and more integral part of community leadership than ever before. The San Marcos City Council has a female majority for the first time ever and, Armbruster pointed out, women have taken on the top leadership positions in the Lions Club worldwide. Gudrun Yngvadottir, president of Lions Club International, is a woman; State District Governor for the Lions Club Linda Davis is a woman; and Armbruster became the second woman to ever hold the position of president at the San Marcos Lions Club in its 77 years of operation, when she was nominated in 2018 – the first elected woman was immediate Past President Debbie Smith.

“So I thought what better time to have a woman-centric event than this year and right now on this important day,” Armbruster said.

Attendees broke into separate groups for discussion about the needs in the community and how to meet them.

Texas Lions Camp Director of Marketing Trish Wilson was the guest speaker for the event.

Wilson, an ordained minister, spoke about the importance of time and passion and how the two relate to women in leadership that want their time to be spent on impactful work and not busy work.

“Every single second that you are breathing is precious and it doesn’t come to you by chance, it is on purpose,” Wilson said. “For as long as you have breath in your body there is something for you to do and I’m not talking about being busy, I’m talking about being impactful.”

She talked about making every breath count, and the art of making every breath count is investing in yourself as well as others – one’s friends, families and acquaintances. To illustrate her point, she told the story of a boy that she came to know through her work at the Texas Lions Camp, a summer camp for children with physical disabilities, type 1 diabetes and cancer.

She recounted the first time she met this young man who was visually impaired. She shook his hand and introduced herself, but then he began to ask her questions about her life, her family, her job and hobbies, all the while he was feeling the back of her hand, her knuckles, nails and even the small knots and knobs along her fingers, Wilson said.

“Later on in the week, he’s sitting at lunch with another young man,” she said, “and I came up behind him and put my hand on his shoulder so he would know someone was there, without interrupting what he’s saying.”

He reached up and touched Wilson’s hand, instantly recognized her and began to tell the other kid everything he knew about her, including some things that she didn’t know to tell him about herself.

“And he tells this young man, that didn’t care, every detail that I had told him four days before. I was dumbfounded, how did he know it was me? So I asked him ‘How did you know it was me?’” Wilson said. “He said ‘because when I felt your hand, you had that little knobby on your finger like my momma. My mom’s an artist, you’re an artist aren’t you?’ I hadn’t told him that. This young man in just five minutes knew me, because he took the time to know me and he knew things about me that I didn’t know about myself to tell him when I first met him.

“The reason I’m telling you this story is that even though he was a blind man, he has vision,” Wilson said. ”And the people you meet on a daily basis have things going on in their lives and have visions and you yourself have vision and you need to express that.”

Wilson finished her speech by reminding the women in leadership positions around the room that their vision and passion needs to be something lived out every single day, integral like a living and breathing part of each of them.

The symposium was catered by all women-owned businesses in the area including owners of local coffee roasting company Springtown Roasters Misha Bussemey and Tosca Cesaretti.

Armbruster said the symposium accomplished its goal of bringing women in leadership together.

“The attendance and participation at the symposium was a tangible example of how unique San Marcos is. Not only do we have women in leadership roles serving our local community, these women are willing to share their experience and knowledge to help other women for the betterment of our community,” she said.

According to Armbruster, planning is underway for a follow-up event tentatively slated for May.

“We want to keep the conversation and momentum going and are planning for the next event to be even bigger and better.”