Once Upon A Time

A beautiful young woman, Rosa, posted this memory on Facebook. When she was a young teenager, she participated in the Safe Places leadership program, which culminated in The Cinderella Ball. Like all of us, she remembers what an enchanted evening it was. These are her words:

This is how it all began . . . Once upon a time . . . ! This definitely made my night completely and brought so many memories! Thanks to Mrs.Kathy we had Safe Places; we were given the privilege to experience for ourselves that we were true princesses & had our night to shine at the Cinderella Ball!

Try as we might, we cannot live on memories. But we can be strengthened by them, and allow them to remind us of good times. I have to hope that the forty girls who were a part of the princess leadership program, and later presented at The Cinderella Ball, will take the lessons they learned from the summer program into their lives. I hope that their night of feeling like a princess at a grand ball will translate into a positive self-image that will forever remind them of their worth.

I look back with regret that the program could not continue, that we could not reach hundreds of girls. But that was not to be, and I have to rest on the fact that we did reach, over four years, at least forty of them whose lives were changed by the experience. The lesson for me is that you help the one person you encounter, and don’t despair that you couldn’t do more. That one person, like Rosa, may remember fondly what you did to enrich her life.

The Program? Well, it wasn’t about the prince. It was about young girls finding their own self-worth and learning to make a positive impact on their world. In the following brief video you will see them spending time teaching and leading at a local daycare center. Please watch The Cinderella Ball video and meet Rosa, and the other young girls in the program: