Ladies Night Out showcases entrepreneurs

On Friday, March 11, the Odessa Friends of the Pool will hold their ninth annual Ladies Night Out at the community center from 6 to 9 p.m. The event features primarily home-based businesses and independent contractors selling products. Vendors present include Thirty One, Pampered Chef, Scentsy, Velata, Miche, Plexus, Tupperware, Mary Kay, Premier Designs Jewelry, Girl Scouts, Doterra, Dove Chocolate Discoveries, Perfectly Posh, Norwex, Jamberry, LuLaRoe, Pink Zebra and Usborn Books.

The event not only provides vendors with access to a large crowd of potential customers, it also gives visitors to the event the opportunity to see what is new with the many companies represented, without having to attend numeous home parties to find out.

The event will feature alcoholic beverages and hors d’oevres, so attendees must be 21 years of age or older.

The town of Odessa and Odessa Friends of the Pool have been working together for the past 10 years to fund major repairs to the aquatic center, now more than 20 years old.

Over the past 10 years, the community of Odessa has shown overwhelming support for the Friends of the Pool. This support has enabled the town to provide supplemental lifeguard wages, advanced lifeguard training, subsidized swimming lessons and adult swim times. It has contributed to the replacement and updating of equipment, modernization of the bathrooms, installation of a handicapped lift for the main pool and retrofitting of a RenoSys PVC pool lining over all four of the center’s pools, intended to increase their lifespans for another 20 years or more.

In 2014, the Friends of the Pool invested $35,000 to level, replace, and repair major portions of the concrete decking that had been deemed unsafe by the county health department. In 2015, the Friends of the Pool pledged $6,000 to the Town of Odessa to pay for custom pool covers, with the hope of reducing overnight heat loss in the pools and thus reducing electrical costs.

The mission of the Friends of the Pool is to continue raising funds for major repairs and regular updates to keep the Odessa Aquatic Center a functional community asset.