[clarification needed] Members engage in developing civic leadership skills, fundraising, and volunteering on committees to support partner community organizations related to foster children, domestic violence, human trafficking, illiteracy, city beautification, and other issues.

Designed by architect John Russell Pope and opened in 1929, the building contained a swimming pool on the top floor, bedrooms for volunteers, a ballroom, a hairdressing salon, and a shelter for up to 20 abandoned babies.

A new Constitution was written, and the Board was tasked with acting as an information bureau for the leagues, as well as continuing to publish the Bulletin and coordinating the annual meeting (100 Years, 47.)

The idea that women can meaningfully contribute to solving social issues and bettering communities through voluntarism has been a core tenet of the Junior League since its conception.

In the Junior League’s 1906 Annual Report, Harriman Rumsey emphasized the organization’s imperative to alleviate civic ills: "It seems almost inhuman that we should live so close to suffering and poverty ... within a few blocks of our own home and bear no part in this great life" (100 Years, Introduction).

This altruistic spirit inspired Harriman Rumsey to organize a group of 80 young women to volunteer for the College Settlement on Rivington Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

Every week, League members would teach classes, hand out library books and engage in other enriching activities for children at the settlement house.

There was an interest in creating affordable, sanitary and comfortable accommodations solely for women – an alternative to tenement housing that would also protect against discrimination on the basis of nationality or religion.

At a rate of $4 to $7 a week, residents were provided a range of amenities including a library, roof garden, laundry, and tennis and basketball courts.

This wide-ranging agenda would go on to encompass volunteering efforts around the country related to education, voting rights, child welfare and historic preservation, among other areas.

School and Home Visitors, which began as a pilot project, was ultimately so successful that in 1910, New York state absorbed responsibility for the program and expanded its funding and reach.

When a League was organized in Brooklyn in 1910, the members petitioned the Board of Education to provide free lunches in public schools and transform vacant lots into playgrounds (100 Years, 26).

This advocacy work continued after World War II, when the Baby Boom created an additional need for resources to support schools, playgrounds, and teachers.

Laura Bush spearheaded an initiative in early childhood development to help infants and children get a leg up on reading before entering school (100 Years, 144).

One year after Congress passed the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, the Junior League held its annual conference in St. Louis.

Junior Leagues established and operated milk stations and nurseries for the children of working women, and also ran soup kitchens (100 Years, 65).

The Tampa Junior League supported and built out a tuberculosis clinic and treatment center known as the Pine Health Preventorium, through which it provided assistance to 150 children between 1933 and 1934 (100 Years, 65).

In 1991, the League launched Don't Wait to Vaccinate, a public awareness campaign focused on encouraging early childhood immunization (100 Years, 11).

All 276 Leagues joined in to distribute information about the importance of vaccination, utilizing multilingual radio announcements, billboards, and handouts to spread the message.

Along with these efforts, the Leagues tackled problem areas such as the lack of health clinics, insurance and language barriers that they recognized as factors in preventing wider-spread immunization (100 Years, 101).

The success of the Don't Wait campaign garnered widespread attention – President George Bush called the program "a point of light" (100 Years, 166).

Having begun to take shape in the 1930s, they are collectively governed by their member Leagues and the methods by which they operate vary by state, as do the issues chosen for study and action.

Following the conference, the Junior League of Chicago produced a national tour of The Blue Bird by Maurice Maeterlinck, which was staged in 15 cities and seen by 35,000 children.

By the end of the 1950s, Leagues across the country – from San Francisco to Jacksonville, Florida – established or entered into partnerships to open up museums for children in their own communities (100 Years, 102).

In 1946, the Junior League of Charlotte stepped in to save a small but popular Children’s Nature Museum thought up by a local school teacher from financial ruin.

The League staged a fashion show, barbershop quartet, and follies to raise funds, eventually securing enough resources to take over an abandoned day nursery for a nature center.

Junior League members organized blood drives, worked for the Red Cross, volunteered in daycare centers, sold US Treasury War Bonds and Stamps, and performed for servicemen at the USO and other venues (100 Years, 86).

By 1943, the initiative had garnered such success that the WAAC was elevated to Regular Army and afforded pay and privileges equal to what was granted to male soldiers (100 Years, 85).

[15] including but not limited to: Arizona California Canada Florida Georgia Illinois Massachusetts Minnesota Mississippi New York New Jersey North Carolina Ohio Oregon Pennsylvania Texas Utah Virginia Washington Wisconsin

In 1996, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and San Francisco Gate publicized that a male hairdresser named Clark Clementsen tried to join the League after his "high society clients" recommended him, but was denied membership and retained an attorney to argue his case at a meeting of AJLI representatives in NYC.