Advance Robbinsville
November 2023 FREE
Rainbow Girls mark 100 years of service Local organization celebrates century of service with project benefiting HomeFront BY JOe EMANsKi
Young women looking for ways to volunteer their time for a good cause have a variety of options available to them these days. Among them is the International Order of the Rainbow For Girls, a youth group for girls ages 11-20. The order formed its first assembly in McAlester, Oklahoma, in 1922, and a first New Jersey assembly was held in 1923. This fall, New Jersey assemblies marked a century in existence with luncheons and service projects. Members of Trenton Assembly No. 9, which meets twice monthly in Mercer County, donated 100 purses to HomeFront for its service project. HomeFront pursues its mission of ending homelessness in New Jersey by providing shelter, meals and necessities for families in need. The 22 members collected 100 “gently used” pocketbooks and filled them with toiletries
and other essentials for women before donating them to the nonprofit. “The Rainbow Girls are mostly a service organization, so we wanted to do something that was relevant to the community,” said Christine Storie, a Ewing resident who serves as mother advisor for the Trenton Assembly. “The young ladies, in combination with the parents and advisers who help us, collected items all year long to stuff in these bags.” Storie (who is also an account representative for Community News Service, the publisher of the Ewing Observer), said the assembly held a luncheon on Sept. 25 that both current members and alumnae of the assembly attended. “We had octogenarians through 10-year-olds all sharing in the tradition,” Storie said. “It’s a sisterhood. It’s a community of ladies who go through the same set of traditions throughout the years.” Girls ages 5 through 10 are eligible to become Rainbow Girl pledges, while girls ages 11-20 are eligible to become Rainbow Girls. After the age of 20, many Rainbow Girls remain involved with their assemblies See RAINBOW, Page 10
COMMUNITYNEWS.ORG
Shravan Rajagopal (left) with his cousins Svadrut and Udhirna Krishnamurthy of Robbinsville, work on their new MyCrohnicles mobile app.
Teens create app to help people suffering with IBD EDiTeD BY BiLL SANserViNO
They’re a trio of teenage techies. Proof of their talent is MyCrohnicles, a new free mobile app they created, now available for Google Android and Apple iOS smartphones and tablets.
MyCrohnicles is the handiwork of Robbinsville High School senior Udhirna Krishnamurthy, 17 and her brother Svadrut, 13, an 8th-grader at Robbinsville’s Pond Road Middle School. It’s the brainchild of their cousin, Shravan Rajagopal,
a 17-year-old senior at East High School in West Chester, Pennsylvania. The purpose of MyCrohnicles: Help an estimated 3.1 million Americans with inflammatory bowel diseases such as Crohn’s See APP, Page 14
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