Junior Pledge
The Junior Pledge was written in 1916 by Helen Cheney Kimberly of California, and was adopted in 1930 at the GFWC Convention as the National Junior Pledge.
I pledge my loyalty to the Junior Club women,
By doing better than ever before
What work I have to do;
By being prompt, honest, courteous,
By living each day, trying to accomplish something,
Not merely to exist.
The Collect for Club Women
Written in 1904 by Longmont (Colorado) High School Principal Mary Stewart, the Collect For Women is read at every GFWC chapter around the world. In her own words “It was written as a prayer for the day. I called it a ‘Collect for Club Women’ because I felt that women working together with wide interests for large ends was a new thing under the sun and that, perhaps they had need for special petition and meditation of their own.” The first women’s organization to hear and use the Collect was the General Federation of Women’s Clubs.
While written in 1904, the words of the Collect for Women still are true today.
Keep us, oh God from pettiness;
let us be large in thought, in word, in deed.
Let us be done with fault-finding and leave off self-seeking.
May we put away all pretense and meet each
other face to face — without self pity
and without prejudice.
May we never be hasty in judgment and always generous.
Let us make time for all things;
make us to grow calm, serene, gentle.
Teach us to put into action our better impulses,
straightforward and unafraid.
Grant that we may realize it is the little
things that create differences,
that in the big things of life we are at one.
And may we strive to touch and to know the great,
common human heart of us all, and
O Lord God, let us forget not to be kind!
–Mary Stewart
The Junior Pledge was written in 1916 by Helen Cheney Kimberly of California, and was adopted in 1930 at the GFWC Convention as the National Junior Pledge.
I pledge my loyalty to the Junior Club women,
By doing better than ever before
What work I have to do;
By being prompt, honest, courteous,
By living each day, trying to accomplish something,
Not merely to exist.
The Collect for Club Women
Written in 1904 by Longmont (Colorado) High School Principal Mary Stewart, the Collect For Women is read at every GFWC chapter around the world. In her own words “It was written as a prayer for the day. I called it a ‘Collect for Club Women’ because I felt that women working together with wide interests for large ends was a new thing under the sun and that, perhaps they had need for special petition and meditation of their own.” The first women’s organization to hear and use the Collect was the General Federation of Women’s Clubs.
While written in 1904, the words of the Collect for Women still are true today.
Keep us, oh God from pettiness;
let us be large in thought, in word, in deed.
Let us be done with fault-finding and leave off self-seeking.
May we put away all pretense and meet each
other face to face — without self pity
and without prejudice.
May we never be hasty in judgment and always generous.
Let us make time for all things;
make us to grow calm, serene, gentle.
Teach us to put into action our better impulses,
straightforward and unafraid.
Grant that we may realize it is the little
things that create differences,
that in the big things of life we are at one.
And may we strive to touch and to know the great,
common human heart of us all, and
O Lord God, let us forget not to be kind!
–Mary Stewart