Community!

It takes a village…or an island!

Our island community is quite extraordinary! I feel sure, dear reader, you feel the same about your home town. A sense of community is essential to a well lived life, if you ask me!

Last Saturday the gals at The Islander along with our friends at Leanis, The Island Girl and Comfort By Design Shoes all got together to do a Facebook live fashion show to benefit the Ft. Myers Beach Community Foundation. The Community Foundation is a great organization that raises money for scholarships, other organizations needing support and causes they feel represent the mission of the group. https://fmbcommunityfoundation.com/

Every year the foundation hosts a fashion show and luncheon as one if its two principal fundraisers of the year. Last year, it was cancelled due to Covid-19. This year we were faced with cancelling or scaling back to only be able to invite 50 people until the idea of trying to go “virtual” came along. Susie Krajewski of One Flight Up Hair Design, https://www.facebook.com/OneFlightUpSalon/, was the organizer par excellence! She took the idea and ran with it! Baskets were displayed at the library for people to bid on and online auctions were set up for the many folks who participated from far and wide. When Saturday rolled along we were primed and ready for a successful event thanks to the addition of Beach Talk Radio, https://www.facebook.com/beachtalkradio We couldn’t have done it without them. They set everything up to film and then streamed the show for us. I’ll share the link for the show here https://fb.watch/3Ktr2fp4pG/

The bottom line is… it really does take a village, a community, to make things happen. After months of planning, everyone came together and the event was better than we could have imagined. Folks called in, went online to buy tickets, and we even had an audience of about 20 people! All this from the breezeway! We were outside, socially distanced and we had a great time raising money for great causes! What could be better!

Thanks to everyone who helped, spent money and gave to a great organization so they in turn can give to others. We appreciate you very much!

-Anita