On Aug. 5 at Beachview Country Club, a capacity crowd celebrated the chartering and induction of a new Z Club for PACE GirlZ by the Sanibel-Captiva Zonta Club. A distinguished audience from Sanibel, Fort Myers and other Florida locales welcomed the PACE GirlZ with enthusiasm, gifts and warmest wishes for their future in this unique endeavor.

The representation from Sanibel government was spearheaded by Kevin Ruane, who spoke eloquently about his experiences with teenagers and the opportunity the girls were about to launch. Jim Jennings spoke briefly about why this effort was so valuable and important to our community.

Also attending were Pamela Smith and Judie Zimomra, who commented, “It is an honor to be a member and to serve a community where gifted and talented women devote their time to the development of our next generation of women leaders.”

The PACE Board was represented by Gail Markham, Chair, who introduced each girl individually and had some remarks for the PACE Z GirlZ. Also attending from their Board of Directors were Sandra Stilwell and Cora Molloy, Esq. Debbie Webb, Executive Director of PACE expressed “appreciation to the women of Zonta for ‘adopting’ the girls. They are truly excited about their service projects and helping others.”

The remainder of the guests were Zontians from San-Cap and other Area 6 Zonta Cubs (Bonita Springs, Fort Myers, Sarasota) including the Lieutenant Governor for District 11, Jane J. Adams from Boca Raton, a 35-year Zonta Member. Both local newspapers, the Island Reporter and the Island Sun, attended and Anne Bellew and Anne Mitchell are acknowledged for their extensive coverage of the event.

PACE has an unusual School Store – called a Point Store – where no money or credit cards are utilized. Rather, the girls earn points for positive behavior and results and then can “purchase” a wide variety of necessities for teenage girls; hair, body and skin products, picture frames, candles, arts and craft projects, small purses, etc. At the end of the day, there were baskets and bags of goodies piled up to stock the nearly empty shelves for the entire school.

The Z Club girls – Diamond, Riley, Danielle, Kristina, Kaley and the three officers, Fatima, Tamara, and Brittany as well as the advisors, Julie Kirkpatrick and Carly Moorman – had the fun job of surprising the Pace Center with the donations.

The membership committee of Zonta of San Cap helped out with set-up, welcome, food and gift table, enabling the event to run smoothly. Lastly, the contributors who were behind the scenes and kindly donated their services and product to make this event a huge success: Beachview Country Club (room, beverages, set-up, linens and cleanup) and Allegra Printing on Metro Parkway, who donated the dynamic program.

The 50/50 raffle was won by Terry Carbonell, a pilot from Women’s Air Race Classics who came with her colleague, Cheryl Lynn Dratler. Terry won $250 and donated $125 to the Z club and $100 to the Women Air Race Scholarship Fund, and $25 for herself. The Z Club had a total of $350 in donations to seed their upcoming projects for raising the status of woman and girls in their school, their community and gaining awareness of the plight of women internationally.

The Zonta Club of Sanibel/Captiva is a service organization of professional women working together to provide hands-on assistance, advocacy and funds to strengthen women’s lives on the islands, in Lee County and around the world through Zonta International.

For more information, visit www.zontasancap.com. To learn more about tutoring or mentoring programs at PACE, go to www.pacecenter.org and then to Centers/ Lee County.