American Friends of Blerancourt

ARE YOU GAME?

French Version of this post, click here.
Special thanks to Delphine Schrank for editing this story

They didn’t just want to give to their favorite foundations. Some New Yorkers wanted to have some fun while doing it, playfully bidding for things both secret or less than significant. In the end, the cost matters less than the price of elegance.

What about you? Would you take the gamble and surprise a gathering of bow tied, long-dressed revelers, the accoutrement of traditional New York galas whose ‘in-person’ season just wound down with the closing year? How much would you be willing to pay to blindly acquire the contents of an evening clutch or a surprise bag – to promote Franco-American friendship?

It all started with a challenge, “un pari” in French. Un jeu, a game.

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About courage and women | The Story of Rita Wilson’s mother
Rita Wilson’s acceptance speech at the Anne Morgan Women of Courage Award
American Friends of Blérancourt – New York, November 9, 2018

“We are lucky to live in a world where we’re surrounded by women of courage,” the actress, producer, singer and songwriter Rita Wilson said the evening she was bestowed with the Anne Morgan Women of Courage Award by the American Friends of Blérancourt. “At the time when we celebrate the centennial of the end of World War I, we wanted to honor and recognize women of exceptional talent and commitment to empowerment of women throughout the world,” explained the President of the American Friends of Blérancourt Countess Dorothea de la Houssaye.

Telling the story of her own mother, the producer of Mamma Mia and My Big Fat Greek Wedding, emphasized the need to tell the stories of women around the world whose actions, just like the ones by Anne Morgan, defined what we can all individually accomplish.

“That’s something Anne Morgan understood well,” explained Wilson. “She spent her extraordinary life on the front lines: as a union organizer in 1910, as a volunteer ambulance driver during World War I, as a philanthropist who stayed and helped France rebuild long after others had left.

But Anne Morgan also believed in the power of telling stories. As one of the first women documentarians, she knew that if you want to solve a problem you have to shine a spotlight on it, and sometimes point a camera at it. And you can’t just tell us about the world you hope to see – you have to show us, in the way that only a work of passion and creativity can.

And then there are the women – millions upon millions of women – whose stories we may never know: mothers who face overwhelming danger to build a better future for their children; girls who risk their lives just to go to school; working women everywhere who break through glass ceilings large and small. The quiet, humble courage that sustains them each day is an inspiration to all of us.”

Here is the story of Rita Wilson’s mother.

Continue reading “About Courage and Women: The Story of Rita Wilson’s Mother”