– by Doreen Marion Gee –
This is part of a rotating series of articles on members of Sidney Meet Up Women’s Networking Group, featuring women in business on the Saanich Peninsula.
The right words on paper carry extraordinary power. The ability to write is a precious skill that gives people a voice and empowers them to influence others. Donna Randall is using her writing finesse to “make a difference” in our community. With a very powerful tool at her disposal, Donna infuses respect and dignity into the lives of others.
Underneath Donna Randall’s easy laughter is a savvy entrepreneur. Utilizing her exceptional writing skills and personal experience, the owner of “dfrent: making a ‘dfrence'” aims to improve people’s lives. An important project is her new book, “Menopause or Lunacy … That is the Question”, where Donna tackles a tumultuous time of life rife with unsavoury symptoms. With skilled writing based on personal experience, she cleverly offers humour to buffer the living hell of this life-change. Below the mirth is a genuine desire to legitimize this hormonal upheaval and build respect and dignity for female sufferers. With skilled penmanship, Donna puts her arms around afflicted women, so they feel cared about, supported and less alone.
The lively entrepreneur’s other labour-of-love is “The Essential Family Caregiving Agreement.” In her personal situation, Donna recognized the need for an agreement between family members as primary caregivers. She used her writing skills to create a formal agreement “promising levels and elements of care” by certain family members to her ageing mother-in-law. It was a practical and palatable venue to facilitate communication between family members and elderly parents about “difficult situations.” Donna’s agreement became a template for other families and doctors. Her caregiving guide “normalizes” a challenging situation and allows families to pull together and be proactive in the care of elderly parents. Here again, Donna is using the power of the written word to bring solutions and dignity to elders and their families as the sun sets.
A whirl-wind professional fundraiser, Donna uses her wizardry with words to raise money for compassionate causes – one of her “persuasive and creative” writing services. “1.4 million raised for charities since 2001” leaps off Donna’s webpage! One of the lucky beneficiaries of her talents is the Saanich Peninsula Hospital Foundation. “Fundraising, which includes doing proposals, goes right back to writing” explains Donna. “Any funding organization will get thousands of applications. With proposal writing, you have to make it interesting from the get-go.” In her proposals, Donna tells a story of the organization seeking funding, painting a picture of their unique needs and capturing the interest of the reader.
The right words are powerful magic wands. Donna Randall proves that skilled writing is a healing potion, conjuring up remedies to agonizing problems and providing the mortar of a compassionate community.
Contact, services, book (available from Tanner’s) & on-line caregiving form: www.dfrent.org.
