YODER – The Yoder Woman’s Club (YWC) has held a dinner in the small town of Yoder for, what feels like, ever. 

YWC has been in operation in Goshen County for over 100 years.

“We are a Federated Women’s Club,” Bev Yiek, long-time club member, said. “I think we are the oldest club because we celebrated our 100th birthday in 2021, for the YWC.”

“I am in my third year,” Amanda Fogle said. “I’m a newbie.” 

Some of the members have been with the club for over 50 years.

The annual feed is the main source of funding for the YWC donations and the proceeds of the dinner go to a long list of organizations in the area. 

“A lot of times, we pay for local projects. We paid for the lights around the community building,” Fogle said. “There are little local needs and things like that, sometimes we help with those.”

“This is where our money goes,” Yiek told the Telegram, as she pointed to a hand-written sign displayed on the wall of the community building. 

“We have two EWC scholarships a year. We give to the Goshen County Task Force. We give to Gracie’s Promise,” Yiek read off a few organizations. “We give, I can’t remember how much money K-2 to the teachers for them to buy Scholastic Books for their students that don’t have the money.” 

Fogle set up a “Sunshine Fund” at Southeast Schools for students and their families that might need a little assistance during these trying times. 

“We use it to, number one, get food for my office for students that might need it,” Fogle explained. “Or we use it for prescriptions for kids, or tires, once. [We use it for] Student needs that we have that we can’t find another resource for.”

The club is a huge supporter of its hometown, Yoder. 

“We built this building,” Yiek said, as she pointed around the community building. “We owned the property across the street but the building was falling down. Someone gave us this property, I hope I get this right, so we wrote a grant and built this [the community building] and we gave our property to the town, where they later built the fire department,” Yeik explained.

The VWC continues to give back to the community. 

“On clean-up day, we furnished hamburgers, hotdogs, chips, brownies and lemonade for the people that would come out to the garage sales and stuff so they could come here,” Yiek said. 

“We are a big, big supporter of Yoder Days,” Fogle added. 

Community members have enjoyed the traditional Sunday menu of chicken and noodles served over mashed potatoes, along with salads and desserts. 

The first weekend in Nov. is also the opening weekend for pheasant hunters in Goshen County.

“This is the first weekend of pheasant hunters, and since we don’t have a café anymore, it really works well,” Yeik said. “On Saturdays we have hamburgers and chili burgers and hot dogs and Sunday we like to do the family meals.”

This weekend was quite a success for the YWC. 

“We did really good. We definitely did more today [Sunday],” Yeik said.

Getting involved is rather easy and the YWC invites the ladies of the community to get involved. The organization meets once a month on the third Wednesday of the month.

“Around Thanksgiving and Christmas, we may move it [meeting dates] up a little bit,” Yiek explained. 

“We have a lot of folks that live here in Yoder,” Fogle explained, “but we have a lot of them from Torrington and even Douglas now. We’re willing to have anyone that’s willing to come and be a part of it [YWC]. “

“It’s a great way to get involved in your community,” Fogle said.