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AND THE WOMEN GATHER Literary Jazz Brunch is the premier event celebrating Women’s History Month in Florida. Each year we bring 400 women of all ethnicity together for a Literary jazz Brunch featuring Five Best Selling Authors, live Jazz and amazing food.
Our authors are Our sponsors such as Books and Books and Philip Stein Teslar have been with us for over six years. Our sponsors know that as women not only do we make the buying decisions in our families, we are also very loyal. You support us we support you. That is why sponsors such as Pottery Barn, Williams Sonoma and Minuteman Press and Coconut Grove Gallery and Interiors are all joining us this year.
Our attendees will be coming from as far south as the Florida Keys and as far North as VeroBeach and across to Naples and everywhere in between. The most important thing about AND THE WOMEN GATHER Literary Jazz Brunch is that proceeds go to support Women Behind Bars.
AND THE WOMEN GATHER
Literary Jazz Brunch will be held, Saturday March 14, 2009 at the
Five Star Ritz Carlton Hotel, Coconut Grove.
Please feel free to visit our website www.lornaowens.com, under our Charity section for a slide show of last year’s AND THE WOMEN GATHER.
I look forward to your sponsorship.
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Each year we strive to bring you only the very best.This year let us pamper and indulge you senses with all natural products from our Sponsor Soul Purpose Life Style Company. Simply put we will be taking you on a JOURNEY OF THE SENSES. Here are the countries we will be visiting Brazil, Haiti,Australia,Thailand,Hawaii and the Islands of the Caribbean.
Then we will sit a while and write our secrets, for our eyes only in a beautiful hand made silk journal from India.
Leave with autographed copies of the books from our Guest Authors. You might just want to spend the weekend at the Ritz, we have special room rates for AND THE WOMEN GATHER. We also have something special for you it is called Pure Indulgence. The is a special SPA PACKAGE designed especially for AND THE WOMEN GATHER by the Boutique Spa at the Ritz.
On the way out select a beautiful bag from our Vendors. A lady cannot have too many bags.
Finally each of us must leave with our signature AND THE WOMEN GATHER PENDANT.
Blessings
Lorna
Many people ask me why I would choose Women Behind Bars as our Charity. Let me tell you why and to do so I need to tell you a little about myself. In order to put myself through Law School I worked at a Maximum security prison, RMC Lake Butler as a Registered Nurse. At RMC,I saw the worst a person could become,a murder on Death Row.
I also became very curious as to why people break the law. I found no real answers but I learnt some very important things about myself. I had a great capacity for empathy for just about anyone and that I could show kindness to just about anyone.
After graduating from Law School, I became a Prosecutor under Former Attorney General Janet Reno. My job was to protect the people of Dade County from people who break the law.I was very tough. When I look back at how tough a Prosecutor I was, I laugh and I think God must have strange sense of humor.
Later, I became a Criminal Defense Attorney and I was an equally fierce defender of the rights of my clients.
One very ordinary day I woke up with a strong feeling that I needed to go to the Women’s Annex and work with the women there.
I went and shortly thereafter started going to the Women Annex twice a month to work with the women there. My program centered around one common theme DECISION TO CHANGE.
I wish I can say everyone woman who attended my program changed. Not true, most of the women who attended just wanted me to put in a good word for them with a Judge. But every once in a while I would get one like Estella Washington, single mother of four.
I met Estella Washington on my very first class. She sat in the very front row and she took me to task when she realized I was not there to offer a job or housing. I was there to show them how to change their lives.
After the class, I told her that I was not afraid of her. I told her laughing that I did not think she was doing such a good job with her life because she was in jail.
We made an agreement that if she did everything I told her she could change. She became my best student and did very well.
She got out of jail and I wish I could say it was easy sailing. When she got out jail she because homeless, stole a television set and yes ended back in jail.
She was placed on probation and made a sacred promise to change and she did. She wrote her story in my book, Everyday Grace Everyday Miracle,started speaking around town to other young girls. She eventually moved to Atlanta, got married and is doing very well.
It is for women like Estella Washington that I created Women Behind Bars. Most jails or prisons have a course in cosmetology. So I feel we could get jobs for these women when they get out of incarceration.
Our goal is to open a Spa with a Spa menu and a Salon so Women can work when they come out of incarceration. I have amazing hairdressers, makeup artists, Chef and a Spa Consultant all ready to help set up this Spa and Salon and help with continued training. Some of them have worked at the best Spas, have done Magazine covers, Chef Stefano LaCava has even worked for Oprah Winfrey as a private Chef. They all want to make this Spa and Salon a reality.
Our vision is to duplicate this around the counry.
We really want to work with women going to jail because their jail population is rising at an alarming rate.
When the mothers go to jail and most of these women are mothers it affect the family disparately. The children often become displaced, wards of the State or worst they end up committing crimes themselves.
On like their male counterpart, most of these women are not violent offenders and should response positively to rehabilation.
We have a great challenge here but we also have a great opportunity to do good.
Lorna
This is going to be a Romantic Event. Orchids, Orchids everywhere.