GCAPP 2015 CELEBRATING 20 YEARS OF EMPOWERING YOUNG PEOPLE

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Last week I returned to Atlanta for this years GCAPP EmPower Event where we marked our 20th Anniversary. This year more than 400 supporters, enjoyed an incredible gala and auction at the St Regis. Well I was blown away by what happened. It turned out to be our most successful auction ever!

The board and staff had decided to honor me on this 20th Anniversary and after a moving tribute, presented me with a gorgeous engraved crystal plate from Tiffany.

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Besides our hugely successful auction, we all had our socks blown off by Grammy-Award winning Artist Alison Krauss.

We also showed this video which documents our GCAPP journey. Hard to believe its been two decades!

I was so overwhelmed I didn’t take a lot of pictures. Ted sat next to me and introduced me but I never got a pix of him!

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Also seated at my table, the deep novelist and playwright Pearl Cleage and her husband writer Zaron Barnett. I did manage to snap this photo of them, with Kim Nolte our CEO is seen in the background on the screen.

My BFFs Eve Ensler and Pat Michell surprised me with video messages from pals like Bob Redford and Sally Field; Eve read an incredible poem she wrote to me as only Eve can Do.

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Here is my agent, Ben Dey, who flew in for the occasion. Next to him is Reverend Gerald Durley who’d just flown back from being with President Obama and the Pope. Lucky guy. He used to be on my board.

You can check out more photos from our evening and past EmPower events here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/68816558@N06/albums/with/72157656930208524

Please visit www.GCAPP.org for more information about our programs, and to follow our incredible progress empowering young people throughout Georgia.

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18 Comments
  1. Wow!! Such an amazing cause,, You look amazing by the way!! Love your biography so so much- so inspiring!! I’ve bought it as a gift for so many of my friends/family! I was wondering whether it would be possible to interview you for my school paper? Even if it’s something short it would be amazing… thank you so much!! have a great week!!xxx

  2. Hello Jane,
    Happy Sunday NIght to you!! I just wanted you to know that I always look forward to your Blogs and love seeing what you are up to.I think one of the reasons you inspire me so much is that you always stood up for your beliefs regardless of what anyone else thinks. I really admire that about you and wish I could be more like that. I care way too much about trying to please others.I Just need to let that go and speak my mind more. I am very impressed with GCapp and everything it has done.I feel it is kind of coincidental that you blogged this today because just this morning at church our Pastor preached on serving others and ways we could serve. I had instantly thought of Gcap and have thought about the organization a lot here and there. I feel that my state of Texas could benefit from a program like that. I feel it would be good for young people to have somewhere to go to get educated and not be afraid to discuss issues that they may be having and also to inspire the teen mothers who are out there to finish school. I too had a rough time in Junior HIgh just never felt like I had fit in anywhere.I feel that a program like this could be of great benefit to young people also by giving them the encouragement to do what’s right and just to know that others are going through the same stuff that they are would be of good encouragement. You are amazing Jane!!! I think it’s awesome that you ran a camp for a while too before starting this organization to help young people as well.So many young people have questions and Don’t know where to go for answers.GCAP solved that problem too. I admire you not only for standing up for what you believe in but all the amazing work that you do!!!

  3. Oh, congratulations! Also congrats on your Kirk Douglas Award. What an honor for you, hopefully this begins the wink-wink period of your year. Work it! 🙂 Saturday cannot come soon enough so I can not only join the chorus of the many pundits and critics praising your work in Youth, but sing solo. 😛 You probably have no idea about the amount of love you get on movie blogs. 🙂 Keep rockin’!

  4. Bravo, Jane! What a difference this organization has made in the lives of countless young women. You have inspired me yet again. Oh…and I love Alison Krauss!
    Have a great day! 🙂
    Mel

  5. Congratulations! The video was excellent and quite moving to see what your organization has accomplished. Very impressive!

  6. I am sitting here watching Oprah’s Master Class: Jane Fonda while reading this edition of your blog. I sit her feeling inspired, empowered and mind blown. You truly challenge the cult of celebrity. You are so real and so raw and stand for humanity. I must say the most empowering thing I have heard in a very long time is “we’re not meant to be perfect, we’re meant to be whole.” As someone in her late twenties I often feel like there is something the matter with me. I often hear my inner voice telling me I am not enough, that I am not doing what I am supposed to be doing, I am not a perfect teacher, not a perfect sister, daughter or friend. I am not a perfect 20 something. I am not someone who is considered talented by the masses. I am never going to be an iconic individual and yet I am completely capable of being whole. And that is what I am meant to be and what I hope I teach my students everyday. Thank you for empowering young individuals in whatever way they need it. Be it pregnancy prevention, family planning or having the resources available to make informed decisions about sexual experiences and cultivating hope for the future. Thank you for teaching audiences, especially young audiences that no is a complete sentence, and that “anger is good. Anger brings clarity” (Fonda, J. (2006). My Life So Far with Jane Fonda. University of California Television (UCTV0. Available online @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3HATmTo-vc&index=24&list=WL). I also thank you for empowering young and old people by challenging us to “try to grow empathy within [ourselves]” (Fonda, 2015).

  7. great video! (did Vanessa make it?)

    why this needless and compounded suffering?
    I for one, don’t believe such huge public problems should be left to private foundations and individuals to solve. I wish the great power of the people in the form of our democratic government would be deployed in making our world what it should be…and could be!
    that said, thank god for you and your organization.
    a 60 percent reduction in teen pregnancy!?
    no one can argue with that!
    Jane Fonda!
    Jane Fonda!
    Jane Fonda!

  8. is your organization, GCAPP, pro life? Just asking. Thanks. Jana R.

  9. Just came home from Youth. Both my friend and I are floored. What a movie. Not easy to digest, but rewarding, elegant, ironic and uplifting. Your role is a small masterclass of acting: your campy diva character is confusing, hilarious and earth-shattering at the same time. It almost throws the movie out of balance and yet it’s one of its most tender and honest moments. It shouldn’t fit in and yet it becomes such an organic part of this subtle movie, it’s just unbelievable. Yet probably my personal favorite moment was not your big monologue, but your brief moment with Harvey Keitel on the field. It was unforgettable and showed just as much of the complicated dynamics of this relationship as THE big scene. Bravo Jane.

  10. for me “pro life” means that we support optimal coditions that create and sustain our existance in ALL its potential.
    Every single living cell in all organisms
    reflect the whole of creation. I think its much more important that we support the environments that create life. healthy bodies and minds that create healthy generations and loving lives.
    One could make an argument that our world is very much like the female uterus, a place where the entirety of life’s potential is cradled. People who are so strangely and vehemently opposed to abortion and reproductive rights seem to align themselves with an ideolgy that puts profits as their main priority and therefore dont seem to care about the environment of the womb nor do they seem to care about the environment of the planet and yet they call themselves “pro life”

  11. Jane, I want to congratulate you for achieving with the people you work with for reaching so many goals in helping change the lives over the last 20 years for so many people empowered by GCAPP in Atlanta.. So many blogs to you tell you how great you look, and you do, but I just want to say how much I respect and admire everything you seem to always conquer. How lucky people you work with, your friends, Richard, and family are to have you in their lives.
    Barbara XXX

  12. I always respect that you are selective about what you choose to weigh in on (as are we all), but I was wondering — how do you score the 5 Democrat Party 2016 Presidential candidates after tonights CNN debate? Just for the record, my scores (which include personal bias, performance, policies and electability) are as follows: Clinton 38%, Sanders 31%, O’Malley 24%, Webb 7% and (somewhat embarrassingly) Chafee at 0%.

    That purple jacket is stunning. FYI: Newly hired associates at Macy’s “America’s Department Store” are required to watch a decidedly anti-union/anti-organizing propaganda/intimidation video. (Reagan’s Legacy: The Destruction of Organized Labor and, therefore, The Middle Class) So far, my experience as a new associate at JCPenney has been the opposite of what I have experienced in the lot of many of my former jobs. Warmth, connection, decent pay and thorough, educational training. I’m going to be selling Men’s Suits and Furniture from our Home Department. I love style and discussions about form, function, affordability and sustainability. Maybe this is my passion? My therapist is happy for me — and is teaching me invaluable stress management techniques.

    How excited are you to see “Suffragette” with Meryl Streep, Helena Bonham Carter and Carey Mulligan? Did you see “Far From The Madding Crowd” in which Ms. Mulligan was (as always) brilliant?

    I love you, Jane. The lessons that you teach are that happiness is a journey and along they way we must learn the skills of analysis, assertiveness, commitment, diplomacy, education, effort — and the greatest challenge of all: the reconciliation between our ideals and our desires.

    So far, I really like being in my forties! I’ve never said that before about any age. You and many others provide such hope, inspiration, guidance and leadership that it CAN continue getting better.

    • Peter, I don’t know how to rank the debaters like you did but I think Hillary did wht she needed to do to stay on top and Bernie Sanders did what he needed to do—keep the central issues at the forefront.

  13. Dear Ms. Fonda,
    Thank you again for sharing the name of your surgeon. I’m getting closet to pulling the trigger… feeling all the ambivalence you did, but not liking the turkey neck either! What’s a little nip/tuck anyway? I am sincerely appreciative of your generosity in sharing your resource. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
    Best,
    Maro

  14. Just a quick thank you, Jane. I spent Sunday afternoon curled up in bed with my husband watching “Barbarella”. What a brilliant confection of retro-futuristic, politically philosophical, comedic sexual romp-dom. The costumes, the sets, the music and the opening credits sequence — where you shake the credits out of your fabulous hair — all brought such whimsical smiles to our faces. At one point, while your divinely, deliciously iconic character was in her spacecraft, Erik said, “It looks like the walls of her spacecraft were upholstered in ALF skins.” Are you familiar with ALF, Alien LifeForm, Gordon Shumway from the planet Melmac, his girlfriend Rhonda, their culinary fondness of felines and his adopted NBC family, the Tanners?

    Observation: More than anything, Jane, you are the bravest of comediennes. From “Barbarella” to “Nine to Five” to “Better Living Through Chemistry” to “Grace & Frankie” (and many others) you consistently expose your most vulnerable self while delivering lines that you — and that voice of yours — imbue with such existential humor.

    It would be such a dream and profound honor to interview you about your great (amongst myriad gifts) your ability to act. You become your characters. Its fascinating. Learning about the process — do you think that would spoil or enhance the mystery?

  15. Hi, Jane! Been a while since I’ve passed through. Just visited my daughter at college (whom you met when she was 7, carrying her ballet costume at a TX book signing). She is now studying Theater at The Boston Conservatory. I just want to say how proud I am of these young artists who are her peers and classmates. They are healthy, vibrant, confident young women, who are unapologetically THEMSELVES. They have much to learn about life, as well as their craft, but as 18-19 year-olds, they know who THEY are, which is more than many of us could say back then (or even now). And at a buffet of all you can eat pizza, they load up their plates with fresh fruit/veggies. Yay! If you want to build your army of healthy, well adjusted young women, enjoy a thrilling performance or pop in for a pep talk about the profession, I’d be honored to patch you through. In the meantime, I hope you’ll share a grin over the Sanders campaign #FeelTheBern on Twitter. Take your cut of the merchandise off the top! FINALLY got my new (original) workout DVDs. Now where did I leave my legwarmers and ’80s permed hair/bandanas? Cheers! xo

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