Reviving the Women’s Group

Having relocated to Hong Kong, Linda Schnetzer reflects on her two years as president of the Club’s Women’s Group.

On a weekday April morning, Linda Schnetzer walks briskly down the hall to the Women’s Group Office. Carrying a bundle of notebooks and a bag filled with Girl Scout cookies, the Women’s Group president stops in at the organization’s base to see if she can help with anything. It’s hard to believe that she is set to move to Hong Kong in less than a week.

“They always have something for me to do,” says Schnetzer with a wry smile. “I just follow orders.”

In the last year, the Women’s Group saw its membership increase by almost 100 and the amount of funds raised by the group rise by ¥3 million to ¥10 million. Schnetzer says she believes that number will hit ¥12 million this year.

“In the Women’s Group, we have so many amazing, talented people. Just let them do their jobs,” says Schnetzer, who leaves the Women’s Group after two years as its president. “Volunteerism is different from a corporate job. In volunteerism, we have a lot of people, and we have to figure out how we can use everyone in a way that they enjoy. That’s the point.”
Before moving to Tokyo in 2011 (one week before the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Tohoku), Schnetzer organized volunteers on a full-time basis for the national headquarters of the Illinois-based Alpha Phi sorority, where she also filled in as interim executive director.

Not long after the Ohio native joined the Club in 2012, she attended the Women’s Group’s monthly Coffee Connections get-together. “They were recruiting volunteers for the International Bazaar, and I didn’t even know what it was, but I was looking for something to do,” says Schnetzer, 45. “So I put my name on a list.”

After a few meetings, Schnetzer was made co-chair of the event. She joined other committees and began planning tours and events. She also made friends from around the world, some of whom gave her invaluable advice about her new home, Hong Kong.

In the spring of 2013, when it came time to tab a new Women’s Group president, Schnetzer was asked to take the helm by the group’s then membership director, Christa Wallington.

“I said, ‘No way, are you kidding?’” says Schnetzer. “I haven’t been a member that long, but she didn’t listen. Eventually, she wore me down and I became president.”

Schnetzer says that while she and her new board had plenty of plans, they first had to strengthen the group’s offerings and reinvigorate a declining membership that had been hit hard by the exodus of foreigners from Japan in the wake of the 3/11 disaster.

In her second year as president, the board was able to implement its new ideas. It began promoting the Women’s Group at the regular orientations for new Club Members and this year launched a free membership drive.

New programs emerged as well, such as the monthly Language Exchange Coffee, where Schnetzer says she was able to practice Japanese.

“I think just being open to whatever new ideas come is really helping us be more connected and more innovative,” she says. “The Women’s Group is moving forward in a positive way.”

While Schnetzer’s Japan experience was very much defined by her volunteering efforts, she says she learned so much through the Women’s Group classes she took, including the art of flower arranging and even how to prepare a 10-course meal with tofu.

She also explored Japan through the group’s tours, visiting Nagano to see the snow monkeys with her parents and wandering the streets of the charming Tochigi pottery town of Mashiko, which the Women’s Group supported with funds after the 2011 earthquake.

“I’ve met so many interesting people and [have] done so many interesting things through my volunteer role,” says Schnetzer. “It has really been fun for me. Everybody in the Club has really helped us for the past couple of years.”

During a recent trip back to Tokyo to attend a luncheon for a Women’s Group-supported scholar in the New York Ballroom, Schnetzer mentions that she has to drop by the Women’s Group Office. Old habits die hard.

Visit the Women’s Group Office or the Club website to learn more about the organization and its array of programs, events and volunteering opportunities.

Words: Nick Narigon
Photo: Enrique Balducci