The Norma Award, in honor of former member Norma Demaar, is awarded annually to an exemplary member who goes above and beyond for St Charles Women's Club.  This year's deserving Norma Award recipient is Lauren Marica.

"Lauren truly is the face of hospitality. She not only invites us all in, but caters to our every need. This isn’t just at her house, she’s welcoming to all members new and old, wanting to help them to get engaged.

She’s always looking for ideas and ways to improve the club and help the many different committees. She’s always willing to go the extra mile. Lauren has made our bookclub “known” throughout the community. It’s funny and exciting. She manages it as a whole, yet still offering book options that the members chose and different hosts get to promote. This was a dying area in the club and she really put it back on the map!

We are lucky to have Lauren as a member and a friend."

2023 - 2024 President, Jennifer Boyd

My time with the club has felt like being at the center of change happening. We all experienced the isolation of the COVID years and needed to revamp our togetherness. The club has been a catalyst for this. I shared my love of reading and need for socialization to jump start our very fun Book Babes! We meet monthly either out at a restaurant or I plan with a hostess in a home setting where we bring our cooking skills and our appetites to have a fun social hour plus an involved book discussion. I love the many points of view we get from our readers and how everyone’s personal experiences and backgrounds are shared during the discussions so we get to know each other better and find our common ground together. I’ve enjoyed having our ladies over, hosting a few of our gatherings in my home as well as setting up gatherings at local venues.

I’ve happily hosted some of our other social gatherings also because I love bringing people together and helping form connectivity between our members and community. We had a fantastic coffee club meetup where our ladies brought so many delicious breakfast items and I brewed the Nespresso lattes. We had a blast and somehow all managed to fit at one huge expanded table for the morning. We love sharing our recipes and food photos so I was nominated to help push the cookbook project which will contain our members best recipes with stories from the heart to personalize it. Having our members understand which businesses have helped our club is importantly to me. We want to recognize the contributions of those who have given services to help our club succeed and do all the good work we do.

It is vital for us also to support each other. I love how so many members have their own entrepreneurial ventures and although it’s not the primary purpose of the club, creating awareness about what we are all working on is a great way to strengthen and support our community. Our women may be humble about their achievements and aspirations but deserve to be recognized and so I’ve asked for our club to have a page where this recognition can be humbly shared. My goal is for our club members who work so hard to also feel elevated and special in all that they do, because they put out so much positivity into this world.