There will be a grand birthday party on Whidbey this weekend. The decorations will be festive. The cake will be delicious. The candles will be lit, and at this party, there will be a whole slew of people to help blow them out.

This Saturday, the Whidbey Island branch of the American Association of University Women has plenty to celebrate.

This year marks the 125th anniversary of the American Association of University Women, a national organization that works to “promote equity for women and girls, lifelong education and positive societal change.”

With more than 100,000 members, the group bills itself as the nation’s leading voice promoting education and equity for women and girls. Its span even goes international, because since 1946 the organization has held permanent observer status with the United Nations with regard to women’s issues.

Along with the national 100-year birthday, the Whidbey branch will mark its own 10-year anniversary.

During the branch meeting Saturday everyone is invited to come learn what the chapter and the organization are all about. Be sure to wear teal and white — the official AAUW colors. Stay a while and learn the history at the local and national level.

The Whidbey chapter began 10 years ago when 10 women responded to a newspaper ad soliciting members to join the new branch chapter. Although there was a branch on Whidbey before, it folded after a couple of years. But the second incarnation of AAUW on the island still lives strong, according to the chapter’s current president Linda Jedlicka.

Jedlicka joined the organization in 2002. She holds a degree in English from San Jose State University where she studied American literature and minored in journalism. After college she landed in what was at the time a technology field in its infancy.

“I was pretty lucky that going into computer science in its early days of the field there wasn’t any built-in prejudice,” she said.

Today, Jedlicka works with the chapter and its more than 90 active members to help make the world more accessible for girls and women.

“We just keep growing and that’s definitely a good thing,” she said.

Each year the chapter provides three scholarships to island high school seniors, presents awards to outstanding girls in math, science and technology at each of the high schools, sends women to Olympia for Lobby Day, supports national funds for legal advocacy of women, performs as “women from history” in fifth-grade classrooms for a week, and has interest groups ranging from international studies to quilting, book groups and gourmet cooking.

The branch’s most visible venture is its Arts and Appetizers show at the Greenbank Farm which helps raise money for island scholarships and includes creations from artists at all the island high schools.

Jedlicka hopes people stop by Saturday whether to simply wish everyone a “happy birthday” or learn about American Association of University Women history. Stay a while, she said, and see what this group of women is all about.

Watch a taped video address from Charlene McMahon who was supported by AAUW funds in her lawsuit against Carroll College in Wisconsin for job discrimination in her position as assistant professor of chemistry. Also learn of other cases the organization’s 25-year-old legal advocacy fund helped.

If a Saturday birthday celebration isn’t on your agenda, visit www.aauw.org to see how this organization began in 1881 with 17 women who defied societal standards and earned college degrees and has continued to defy boundaries throughout the years.

Meetings of the Whidbey branch are monthly, except July and August when the group takes a break. Plus there’s plenty of special interest groups that keep going year-round. The president and her fellow university women hope to see you there.