The Quakertown Business and Professional Women's Club held their September meeting at a new location, Brick Tavern Inn, 2460 N. Old Bethlehem Pike, Quakertown. President Melissa Wieand chaired the meeting. She shared that our theme for the year will be "Women Inspiring Women."

           Diane Sodano, Esq., Vice-President, had the pleasure of presenting five members who shared their career journeys to the group. Using the BPW/PA theme, "She Believed She Could, So She Did," and "Women Inspiring Women," we had as speakers, Nicole Pompa, financial advisor, Shelby Leight, realtor, Christa Martin, mortgage loan officer, Stacy Ford, massage therapist and athletic trainer, and Nancy Werner, former educator of 35 years, currently in the family communication field and a 54-year member of the BPW organization.

            Two new members were inducted by Gladys Benner, membership chair, and Sheryl Nierenberg: Stacy Ford and Tracy McGovern. We are delighted to have these women join our Quakertown BPW Organization.

            Our fall activities have our local organization attending the District XI Fall District Meeting. We are the hostess for this special event. We are also volunteering at the annual Autumn Alive Festival scheduled for October 19.  We learned from Nicole Pompa that T-shirts are being prepared to give to all who attend this special day. T-shirts will have sponsorship names on them.

            National Business Women's Week (Oct. 20 to 26) will have our monthly local organization meeting featuring the director of the Women's Place located in Doylestown, the county seat of Bucks County. The Women's Place is our shelter for domestic violence victims, women and men. Since October is Domestic Violence Month, Quakertown members will be wearing our purple.

            We are busy planning the upcoming year with programs, projects and events. We are looking forward to working with "The Drop" which our Quakertown Community High School students enjoy visiting after school. The PA Lottery looks like another great project as well as our ever-favorite, "The Paddle Raffle."  The Quakertown Food Pantry was a local organization project as we collected different food items each month. We collected cereals, margarines and breads, and coffee and tea bags of all kinds. We had a different item from January to June. Melissa Wieand was our contact and delivery person.