The DeKalb Area Women’s Center’s primary purposes are to cater to area women from all avenues of life, help to erase sexism and to promote empowerment for women, according to board members.

“We need a place where women are valued, and that’s the basis for it,” said Anna Marie Coveny, one of the center’s four board directors.

Fellow board member Joan Popp, a retired NIU physical education professor of 36 years, volunteers at the center because she believes in its mission.

“It’s the only women’s center in the area,” Popp said. “There is a similar one in Rockford called Women’s Base, but this one’s the only one that’s for all women, no matter race or religion.”

The center conducts its vast assortment of programs and activities with its own mode of operation. The board is composed of four women, none of whom outrank the other.

“Instead of the hierarchical model the guys follow, with business meetings and everything, we have a more shared approach,” Coveny said. “We don’t have a president. When it comes to running the monthly board meetings we take turns.” One member runs the meetings while another member acts as the recording secretary and takes minutes. The recording secretary plans the agenda for the next meeting. The point of the system is there is no central leadership.

Democratically, they decided on the center’s various events, such as the annual “Herstorical Tea Program.” Admission to the tea party is three George Washington-faced dollar bills, one Susan B. Anthony silver dollar, or one Sacajawea golden dollar. The varied rates are not resultant of faulty math, but are in honor of historical women.

“The reason we do this in the modern day is to look back at the day when women hadn’t the right to vote or assemble,” Coveny said, “so they met in each others’ homes for socially acceptable tea parties to strategize getting such rights.”

Safe Passage, DeKalb’s advocacy agency for domestic violence and sexual assault, has held its annual domestic violence vigil and art exhibit at the Women’s Center for 11 years.

Cynthia Folgate, Safe Passage’s community resources director, attributes the exhibit’s success to similar purposes.

“Domestic violence is usually conceived as a women’s issue, but it’s a great place to have the vigil to remember victims of domestic violence,” she said.

For reasons such as this, the center is not exclusive to one sex.

“When we have free and open public events, men are absolutely welcome,” Coveny said. “For special events like women’s self-defense or women’s health issues, the audience is more comfortable being specifically women. We even have men who pay dues. I call them our ‘brave members’.”