MISSION STATEMENT
The mission of The L-Fund is to empower cis and trans lesbians through financial crisis assistance, grants for education, the arts, and health and wellness programs.
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September 2021
Newsletter Volume 2, Issue 3
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In this issue:
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Recipient Stories:
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Be inspired by a Health & Wellness Fund recipient who supported the lesbian community for years & then turned to The L-Fund in her time of need.
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Meet a LEAP grant recipient who went from homelessness to graduate school.
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Discover a hardworking LEAP grant recipient forced to reassess her career due to a pandemic layoff.
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Cheer on multiple Lesbians in Need grant recipients.
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Mark your calendars and buy some tickets to exciting upcoming events with the hottest women in the desert!
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What’s happening at The L-Fund: Check out the revamped website and discover our updated program descriptions.
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Special shout out to our friends at Eisenhower Health.
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Help The L-Fund spread the word about our grant programs.
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Get to know one of our board members in Meet the Board.
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A Role Model Who Needed a Hand
Meet Health & Wellness Fund Recipient Harriet Marks
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Harriet Marks is an 88-year-old spitfire who has lived a life that sounds like it came out of Hollywood. She heard Eleanor Roosevelt speak when she was a little girl, sold moonshine to afford a ticket to New York City as a teenager, traveled the globe as a registered nurse, raised 3 children, escaped an abusive husband, found love with an amazing woman at age 60, unintentionally founded a gay & lesbian community center in Key West, and even helped create a groundbreaking mammogram van program for lesbians in the desert. As women who gave back to our community for decades, Harriet and her wife Madge are role models to many of us here at The L-Fund.
When Madge passed away from COVID last year, Harriet’s world shifted. That tragic event was made more challenging when Harriet took a bad fall, requiring 30 stitches on her head, breaking several teeth and destroying her eyeglasses. While beginning to heal from her loss and accident, she had to move nursing homes and her hearing aid went missing. Suddenly without her hearing and clear eyesight and on a tight budget, Harriet reached out to The L-Fund for help.
Through our Health & Wellness Fund, we were able to purchase Harriet a new hearing aid and eyeglasses. And with the help of Mizell Senior Center, Harriet’s teeth are being repaired, too. With her smile back in place, Harriet humbly tells us, “I cannot begin to tell you what this means to me. I have seen how The L-Fund helps women. And I keep asking myself, ‘What did I do to deserve this?’” The answer, Harriet, is everything.
(Photo courtesy of Corlyce Photography)
If you know any lesbians in need of emergency financial assistance, click here for more info about our Health & Wellness Fund.
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From Homelessness to Graduate School
Meet LEAP Recipient Paula Sheehy
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Recent LEAP recipient Paula Sheehy has faced many challenges on the road of life and The L-Fund has been there to help along the way. She grew up in an abusive home and spent time in juvenile detention centers. Eventually, she ended up homeless, alone and on the streets. The L-Fund first assisted Paula with funding from our Lesbians In Need (LIN) program for housing costs back in 2019.
Having never attended high school, Paula worked hard to get her GED while taking care of three babies. Her life experiences have now inspired her to become a therapist so she can support underserved and at-risk youth. While attending college full-time, working full-time on the weekends and helping to care for her 3-year-old granddaughter who recently had her third heart surgery, Paula received her BA degree from CSUSB.
She has now been accepted into the online Master’s program in Clinical Mental Health Counseling at Adams State University. The L-Fund has paid $2,500 towards her tuition at Adams State University.
And Paula strongly believes in paying it forward! She created a fundraiser on Facebook in honor of The L-Fund for her birthday! Thanks for continually inspiring us, Paula!
If you know any lesbians in need of an educational scholarship, click here for more info about LEAP.
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COVID Creates a Career Pivot
Meet LEAP Recipient Leslie North
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Leslie North is a recent recipient of a LEAP grant. Leslie was a bus driver for Morongo Valley Transit, but lost her job due to COVID-19 when the pandemic shut down schools and in-person classes. She collected unemployment for some time but knew it was time to pivot and rediscover her love of architecture and interior design which included Feng Shui.
The L-Fund financed her enrollment in the Western School of Feng Shui, which is a practice she is passionate about and applies in her own life. Once she receives her certification as a Feng Shui Practitioner, Leslie plans to work with realtors in home staging, interior designers and hopes to eventually build her own business.
The L-Fund is thrilled to help her achieve her potential in this unique practice of balancing an individual with their surrounding environment.
If you know any lesbians in need of an educational scholarship, click here for more info about LEAP.
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Offering Our Support to Lesbians in Need
3 Anonymous Recipients Receive Help
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In the summer of 2021, The L-Fund assisted three additional lesbians in need: one needed assistance with paying her rent for August, another needed help with paying a security deposit on an apartment, and the third needed assistance with paying off vehicle violations to clear her path for enrollment in trucking school.
Many of our grant recipients, particularly Lesbians in Need (LIN) recipients, wish to remain anonymous and The L-Fund respects those requests. Although there is no shame in asking for help, we understand that some women may feel embarrassed about the situation in which they find themselves and do not want others to know they have received assistance. The L-Fund takes this seriously and does its utmost best to ensure privacy and confidentiality.
We never disclose private information or other identifying information of recipients. All recipients named and featured in our newsletter have given permission for us to share their stories.
If you know any lesbians in crisis who could use financial assistance, click here for more info about the Lesbians in Need (LIN) program.
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Time to Party with The L-Fund! |
We are excited to get back into the community and connect with many of you! With COVID precautions and social distancing protocols in mind, we have multiple open-air events on The
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Join us for an afternoon of art on
Sunday October 10th from 2 – 4 PM
and stimulate your senses with interactive sculptures, live music, and wine pairings at the Worthington-Fein private museum and gardens. Early-bird tickets are available now for $50. Tickets will be $75 after October 1st. Purchase your tickets here!
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Register now to golf for a good cause with The L-Fund at the beautiful brand new San Gorgonio Course in Sun City. Early bird price is $150 through Sept. 30th, then $175 after October 1st. Space is limited so sign-up today!
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Visit us at The L-Fund booth (near the Marilyn statue) at the annual Palm Springs Pride Festival on both Saturday and Sunday, November 6th & 7th, to say hello and pick up a surprise gift! And we'd love for our supporters and previous grant recipients to walk with us in the parade on Sunday! Email us at [email protected] if you'd like to join us!
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March 26th, 2022 - Party Under the Stars
Mark your calendars for this exclusive VIP event for 100 of The
L-Fund's supporters at a private residence in Rancho Mirage. Walk the red carpet, enjoy delicious food from our friends at Eight4Nine Restaurant and dance the night away! More details to come...
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The L-Fund.org website has been through a major redesign to make it easier to use for both supporters and applicants. Thanks to the amazing work and commitment of web designer Barbara Gottlieb and our new board, you can now catch up on the stories of past grant recipients, find detailed program pages, peruse the bios of our Board of Directors, and so much more!
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The L-Fund Board of Directors has also taken time this year to refine our four grant programs. Take a look and help us spread the word!
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The L-Fund, and its first grant program, “Lesbians in Need,” or LIN, was established in 2012 out of our founders’ desire to positively impact the lives of lesbians in the Coachella Valley. Their commitment came directly from observations that lesbian communities are often underserved, or even ignored, by many social service agencies. Complicating all of this, lesbians, unlike their straight peers, frequently do not have the support of family to turn to in times of crisis.
Through LIN, The L-Fund offers financial assistance to lesbians in crisis. Circumstances may include potential eviction, homelessness, loss of transportation, unhealthy or unsafe living conditions, food insecurity, and other high-risk mental, physical and emotional circumstances.
Our fund operates on the values of Trust, Confidentiality, and Integrity.
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The L-Fund recognizes education as an important tool through which to advance personal goals, professional goals, and to generally improve life outcomes.
LEAP provides education grants of up to $2,500 per year for cis and trans lesbians in need to attend continuing education, certification classes, trade or vocational schools, community colleges and universities. LEAP grants may be used for tuition, computers, books, school fees, ESL classes, health insurance and living expenses. Previous recipient, Briana Nieves is pictured here with her new laptop and headphones, courtesy of a LEAP grant.
Applicants must reside in the Coachella Valley and surrounding areas. The LEAP Grant Committee and The L-Fund is particularly interested in supporting a diverse range of lesbians in achieving their educational goals.
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This grant supports cis and trans lesbian artists working in any medium or genre, including visual artists, sculptors, musicians, writers, filmmakers, playwrights, performance artists, designers, and others. We are particularly interested in supporting a diverse range of lesbian artists.
Named after artist, filmmaker, philanthropist, and L-Fund supporter, Debra I. Moore (pictured here), the grant seeks projects that further The L-Fund’s ideal of a future in which lesbians, in all their diversity, are free and openly able to express the full range of their talents, identities, and potential. We recognize the arts as a unique and powerful conduit through which to realize this ideal. After all, art, in all its varied forms, is defined by its unique capacity to push us beyond the conditions of the present, the mundane, and the conventional, and to inspire within us a renewed understanding of our shared human condition. See our website for a list of areas of assistance we consider.
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In response to a growing need within the lesbian community, The
L-Fund’s Health and Wellness Fund was established in 2020. Through this fund we provide financial support for a variety of medical services and needs, including but not limited to:
- Medical supplies, hearing aids, eyeglasses, dental procedures, walking aids
- Health insurance
- Out-of-pocket expenses for insured, uninsured, and underinsured lesbians
- Mental Health services
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Special Thanks to Eisenhower Health |
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The L-Fund is honored to have Eisenhower Health as its exclusive health provider sponsor. Look for upcoming talks and seminars that they will be hosting specifically for The L-Fund.
Eisenhower Health is a not-for-profit, comprehensive health care institution that includes the 463-bed Eisenhower Hospital, the Barbara Sinatra Children’s Center at Eisenhower and the Annenberg Center for Health Sciences at Eisenhower. Situated on 130 acres in Rancho Mirage, and with outpatient clinics across the valley, Eisenhower Health has provided a full range of quality medical and educational services for 50 years for residents and visitors to the greater Coachella Valley. Eisenhower recently earned the LGBTQ Health Care Equality Top Performer Designation in the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s Healthcare Equality Index and is a proud supporter of The L-Fund.
Elizabeth Wholihan, Vice President of Marketing and Public Relations says, “Eisenhower Health is pleased to support the efforts of The L-Fund in our community. We believe in providing a caring and compassionate environment for all of our patients, visitors and staff and extend that via community education and outreach that enables us to provide inclusivity in meaningful ways to anyone who wants to be part of the Eisenhower community.”
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Finding our sisters who need financial assistance is an ongoing focus for all of us at The L-Fund. If you know a lesbian who would benefit from our help, please get her permission for you to contact us, or give her our contact information. Thank you for actively supporting the mission of The L-Fund.
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Doris Reed, Poet, Writer & Motivational Speaker
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As a child I had not a clue about where my life’s journey would take me or what paths I would travel. In reflection, it has been an incredible trip that has included 34+ years of employment with Los Angeles County, artistic endeavors, community service, love and happiness, ups and downs. Throughout it all, I stayed focused on giving, helping and supporting others. Now in the autumn of my life, I am able to use the myriad of my experiences by being part of an organization that is the epitome of providing services to a community that has been maligned because of who they choose to love, each other. I am honored to serve on The L-Fund with a group of women who work diligently to provide financial assistance, grants for education, the arts, and health and wellness, to our lesbian sisters in need. As co-chair of The L-Fund, I feel blessed to continue in my commitment to give back through community service and thankful for the ability to do so. |
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Be safe. Be well.
Thank you in advance for your generosity!
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