Ogden nonprofit Give Me A Chance to hold annual benefit after welcoming new director
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- Sister Frances Vista, left, replaced Sr. Martha Garcia, right, as director of Ogden’s Give Me A Chance ministry in June 2025.
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- A statue and shrine of Our lady of Guadalupe in the garden at Ogden’s Give Me A Chance ministry, photographed Monday, Aug. 18, 2025.
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- Ogden’s Give Me A Chance ministry, photographed Monday, Aug. 18, 2025.
OGDEN — A local nonprofit and ministry operated by the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul is preparing for its annual fundraising event after naming a new director earlier this summer.
Ogden’s Give Me A Chance will hold its 11th annual “Enchantment in the Summer Garden” charity benefit on Sept. 6; the gates at 2913 Grant Ave. will open at 5 p.m. The event will include a dinner, a silent auction, a fashion show and a musical performance. Although the deadline to RSVP for the event has passed, limited tickets are still available.
Individual tickets can be purchased for $100; table sponsor costs vary, with each package including one table for eight people. For more information, go to http://www.givemeachanceutah.org/dinner/.
The benefit follows the arrival of Give Me A Chance’s new director, Sister Frances Vista, who took over for Sister Martha Garcia in June. Garcia was reassigned by her order to a ministry in Daly City, California.
For Sister Frances, the move to Utah was something of a full circle moment. Give Me A Chance was founded by Sister Maria Nguyen in 2010 to teach women sewing skills, and Sister Frances comes from a family that is well-practiced in the craft.
“My mother was the master cutter, and we had a ready-made dress factory,” Sister Frances told the Standard-Examiner. “As a second- or third-grader, I learned how to sew, to run a sewing machine. … I have four brothers and one sister; there’s six of us. And when there was a big, big order, we had to help out. I learned to do straight sewing and help out all the sewing machine operators. Even all my four brothers know how to sew. All of us learned to sew.”
Born in the Philippines, Sister Frances found her way to the Daughters of Charity after moving to San Francisco. Her past assignments include the Life Sharing Center and St. Jude Food Bank in Tuba City, Arizona, and the Catholic Native Ministry in Anchorage, Alaska.
Although she had little knowledge of Utah before taking on the director role at Give Me A Chance, Sister Frances has welcomed the move and is excited to get to know the Beehive State better.
“Being in Northern Utah, Ogden and Layton, it’s the open sky. And the feeling of the rural area is still present, and the mountains are beautiful,” she said. “I have yet to explore. I am a fisherwoman, but I can’t do much fishing this time of year. Maybe next year, but I have to explore the little fishing holes.”
As it stands, Sister Frances isn’t looking to institute major changes at Give Me A Chance. Rather, she hopes to expand its myriad offerings to the greater Ogden community. The organization currently offers sewing and quilting programs, English as a second language classes, computer literacy classes, music classes, an after-school program for children, summer camps and more. Sister Frances hopes to launch an art program as well.
“If someone wants to do art, we do not have a volunteer for art, but we have all the supplies for art, for painting,” she said. “That would be really wonderful.”
For now, though, she’s just grateful for the support that Give Me A Chance receives.
“I am very blessed and very inspired by the commitment of the community and our staff and our volunteers,” she said. “Right away, I saw that and I witnessed it.”
Clothes and other merchandise produced by the women who attend Give Me A Chance’s classes are sold at the organization’s nonprofit retail store, DeMarillac Formal Attire, located at 2620 Washington Blvd.
The Daughters of Charity was founded in France by Vincent de Paul in the 17th century. The group’s mission of serving the poorest and most abandoned individuals in society prevails across the globe. Per the organization’s website, there are “more than 13,000 Daughters of Charity living and working in 96 countries.”
