Volunteer Dedicates 20 Years to Arts, Larger Poway Community

Barbara Lerma has loved the theater ever since she attended a Broadway performance of Peter Pan as a young child.

Therefore, Lerma signed up as an usher at the  in 1991, soon after it opened in 1990. Since then, she has served on the Poway Center for the Performing Arts Foundation Board and participated in various committees for the center.

“I got involved because I love it,” said Lerma, who grew up in Long Island and moved to San Diego County as a teenager. “I’ve just loved the theater all of my life.”

Currently, Lerma is a member of the Arts Education Committee and the Auction Committee for the annual golf tournament.

The Arts Education Committee works with the Poway Unified School District to bring the arts into local schools.

The POW! Foundation hosts the Introduction to Instruments program, which sponsors PUSD high school band students so they can host assemblies for the district’s fourth graders each year.

The Arts Education Committee also helps bring to the Poway Center for the Performing Arts. In March, the participatory children's theater company will cast local children in a production of The Wizard of Oz.

“It makes for a better-rounded person,” she said. “They’re using a different part of the brain.”

As a member of the Auction Committee, Lerma helps secure items for a live and silent auction. Proceeds benefit the Foundation.

Lerma has volunteered for a number of other City committees and community organizations in addition to her work at the Poway Center for the Performing Arts.

Currently, she is serving on the Poway Senior Center Board of Directors. She is also the first vice president and former president of the Poway Woman’s Club.

Lerma also participates in various events for the California Library Association, the Friends of the Poway Library, the California Federation of Women’s Clubs and San Diego State University alumni.

Volunteering, Lerma explained, has always been a part of her life, but even more now that she is retired.

She and her sisters were encouraged to be engaged in the community by their parents, who volunteered when they were growing up.

Lerma especially wanted to get involved in Poway because she worked outside of the City. For roughly 30 years, Lerma worked in the library system at the University of California, San Diego.

“You learn things you might not otherwise learn, and you meet people you might not otherwise meet,” said Lerma about volunteering.

Lerma and her husband Charlie have lived in Poway since 1966. 

“I honestly believe that Poway is a nice community,” she said. “It is a good community and there are a lot of good people who live here and they try hard to make this a nice place to live.”

Whether it is at the Poway Center for the Performing Arts or another local arts organization, she appreciates how the community supports the arts, she said.

“We have this beautiful theater,” she said. “There are a lot of people here who appreciate it. This city is wonderful. This is a city-owned and run facility, and it’s a nice place.”

When she is not volunteering, Lerma enjoys spending time with her husband and her dog Nicky, reading, and of course, going to the theater. 

“If you’re going to see something on the stage, in any type of venue, it takes you away from what you normally do,” Lerma said. “You’re opened up to things you may not ordinarily have thought of, or how somebody else looks at the same thing you’re looking at… The arts enhance your life.”