Biography

The Tama County Women’s Club joined the General Federation of Women’s Clubs (GFWC) in 1929 and added Federated to their name. As a county club it served as an organizing body for the various women’s clubs in the county, leading them towards a unified annual goal. These clubs included the Garwin Jr. Women’s Club, the Octagon Club, the Garwin Women’s Club, the Toledo Women’s Club, the Tama Federated Club, the Traer Women’s Club, the Alpha Club, the Gladbrook Community Women’s Club, and the Dysart Women’s Club. The mission of the Tama County Federated Women’s Club was to improve Tama County communities through volunteer service. Many of these services included working at public parks as volunteer gardeners, staffing soup kitchens, donating to the red cross, and bringing in speaking programs for various topics. There was a volunteer program that the club won an award for, the “adoption” of a camper with a disibility at Camp Sunnyside. The Tama County Federated Women’s Club as a whole won several awards from the General Federation of Women’s Clubs as well for their participation in the Adventures in Reading program which encouraged club members to explore books outside of their comfort zone.

Each year the Tama County Federated Women’s Club would meet two or three times a year to discuss business. They also hosted an Annual County Convention where members from across the county were invited to spend a day giving reports about their local club’s activities. During the 1980s and 1990s most of the women’s clubs that were part of the Tama County Federated Women’s Club left the GFWC or were disbanded entirely. In 1998 the Traer Women’s Club and Traer Alpha Club announced that they would no longer be part of the GFWC or the Iowa Federation of Women’s Clubs, leaving the Toledo Women’s Club as the only member of the Tama Clounty Federated Women’s Club. By 2006 the club decided to stop holding the Annual County Convention and reduce its meetings.

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