The Writing for Change Foundation of Bloomington is honored to hold two endowed funds with the Community Foundation of Bloomington and Monroe County. We invite you to read the descriptions below and consider a gift to celebrate the legacies of Beth and Dan Lodge-Rigal and Susan A. Moke.
The Beth and Dan Lodge-Rigal Fund for Women Writing for (a) Change Leadership Initiatives
This fund was established when Beth retired from her role as WWf(a)C Bloomington’s founding Creative Director in 2021.
https://cfbmc.fcsuite.com/erp/donate/create/fund?funit_id=1382
Beth and Dan Lodge-Rigal moved to Bloomington in 1994 and have quietly, consistently contributed to the fabric of the community’s creative, spiritual, and material resources together ever since. In 2004, Beth founded Women Writing for a Change/the Writing for a Change Foundation of Bloomington which has grown into a vibrant community for children, teens, and adults of all genders to explore their creativity and connection in non-judgmental, process-oriented writing circles. The organization also offers an in-depth Conscious Feminine Leadership Training program that uses the same writing circle model to inspire and support women’s growth as leaders.
Beth and Dan shared the work of parenting their daughters Susannah and Harper, each allowing the other to deepen their commitments to community, especially efforts that nurture “human dignity through the possibilities of what can be created locally,” says Beth. Dan, a pathologist at Bloomington Hospital for 21 years, and Associate Professor at the IU School of Medicine, has served on several boards of local service agencies, including Volunteers in Medicine, Stone Belt, and Shalom Community Center (now Beacon) where he served as its second board president. His support of the evolution of the Writing for a Change Foundation was quietly evident in the purchase of the schoolhouse facility where WWf(a)C circles were held for eleven years before the organization moved to its current home, called “New Wings,” located in the old bottling plant next door to Middle Way House. Beth’s arts and leadership work has been recognized with the Toby Strout Lifetime Contribution Award from the Bloomington Commission on the Status of Women in 2020, and a Women Excel Award from the Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce in 2013.
The Beth and Dan Lodge-Rigal Fund for Women Writing for (a) Change Leadership Initiatives honors their legacy of support for individuals as they explore and awaken into their own authority. It will benefit the growth of and access to the organization’s programs that promote leadership with a deeper consciousness.
To contribute to this fund online:
https://cfbmc.fcsuite.com/erp/donate/create/fund?funit_id=1382
The Susan A. Moke Endowment
https://cfbmc.fcsuite.com/erp/donate/create/fund?funit_id=1397
“There’s a rhythm to this work that cannot be denied. I press a treadle and throw the shuttle with my right hand, watching it spin out a trail of scarlet yarn as it glides through the web. … Yet I know very well that any weaver cannot simply sit down at the loom and weave. She must spend long careful hours spinning the yarn, measuring it, cutting it to the right length. … Like the mythic Clotho, who spins out the thread of human life, I must spin out the delicate yarn of my writing life, find ways to weave the bright scarlet thread of my desire to write through today and then tomorrow and then the next day and the next week and the next year…. In the company of writing women, I learn again and again what I already know. The hours of my writing life must be measured carefully and intentionally, the loom must be very deliberately strung, before I can begin to weave the stories I want to tell.” —Susan A. Moke
Susan was born Jan. 11, 1949 and died on July 30, 2013. She settled in Bloomington in the 1970s and earned a PhD from Indiana University Bloomington in English and American Literature. From 1998 to the time of her death, she served as director of communications under four IU presidents and one vice president, as well as communications advisor to IU’s 18th first lady. When she took ill, Susan was working on a novel titled Grand Street, based on her family’s migration from Kentucky to northern Indiana, and had completed a number of short stories and essays.
Over the last 10 years, hundreds of women, like Susan, have participated in our writing circles,discovering themselves through the art of writing and the practices of community and becoming empowered to tell their true stories.
Our core mission is “building community and changing the world, one word at a time.” Simply put, our goal is to change the world, if only the world of one woman or girl whose mind and heart are opened to the power of creative energy and expression.
Your gift to the Susan A. Moke Endowment will help to create a permanent resource that will allow us to expand our reach to women and young girls. In Susan’s name, we invite you to help others weave the stories of their lives, far into the future.
To contribute to this fund online:
https://cfbmc.fcsuite.com/erp/donate/create/fund?funit_id=1397