Please, browse through all the parts of this issue of Mosaic. Discover all the great classes, informative seminars, varied activities and outstanding events available to you!

If you still need some help settling, need some friendship or some practical information: come and attend our “Welcoming Coffee” or our “Surviving Cultural Shock” workshop. Our Get-Togethers provide nice opportunities for newcomers and old-timers living in the same neighborhoods (or even in different neighborhoods!) to meet and network informally. Let’s all enjoy together the family Potluck Picnic on the first week-end of the month. Let’s prepare to bring friends to “Shop for a cause” at the MMMF International Arts and Craft Fair, in the beginning of November. Make time to come and attend Cary Clark’s financial literacy classes which provide the miracle to make “simple” some very “obscure” jargon and notions! It is difficult to list all the opportunities to grasp, to make the most of this month of October!

I should not forget to recommend: “Come to WBFN office!” We are always happy to meet directly with you, to offer you a cup of coffee and listen to you! … Be careful, though! Some people have found the atmosphere at the office quite nice, totally international and refreshingly open and sincere, while professionally active. They identified with all these criteria and came back as volunteers! (This, by the way, is another fructuous way to enjoy one’s time!)

Speaking about all this leads me to a diversion… Let me share the following with you:

When the recipients of the 2009 Margaret McNamara Memorial Fund came in May to introduce themselves, their lives, their commitments, their goals, the auditorium was full. People stood, lining the sides, listening to these amazing women explaining their past, their studies, and sharing their goals for the future: a future where they will contribute by helping women and/or children in developing countries. One of the recipients, Grace Handy (who wrote us a letter published in this issue of Mosaic) began with a tale that I have, myself, often used in the past: the story of the old man on a beach covered with starfish. One by one, he picks up each starfish and throws it back far into the water. Someone tells him to stop: there is no point to what he is doing! There are too many starfish lying on the sand on that huge beach. He won’t be able to save them all! So, what is the point of trying? The old man continues picking up starfish and shows one to his interlocutor before sending it back to the ocean: “For this one, it makes all the difference in the world!”

Grace concludes her article by thanking the volunteers of the MMMF: “A group of women who are making a difference in the world, one woman at a time.” I would like to expand on that idea to thank all the great people volunteering, one way or another, at WBFN to help all the members that we can reach, the best way we can. We can improve. We try to find ways to reach more spouses and partners of WBG staff, and to communicate better what we intend to do for them. We hope to enhance their stay in the big community of the WBG. Even if we cannot solve everything for everyone, I have seen the smiles, heard the comments on the impact we have had and the difference we have made, one member at the time.

Anne Folliet