WOMEN OF WESTCHESTER, consider yourself warned.

If you have a few free hours every month or two, the itch to make a difference in the community and a soft spot for women’s health issues, Israel or stem cell research, then Karen Everett of Larchmont is looking for you.

She’s the new president of the Westchester Region of Hadassah, a 7,000-member-strong, 28-chapter branch of the 95-year-old Women’s Zionist Organization of America.

Those are pretty big numbers (though not all members are active), and Everett’s main goal is to keep them growing, at least close to home.

“It’s a very vibrant organization, and it provides a tremendous amount of empowerment for its members,” said Everett, 49, a member for 15 years. Anyone familiar with the membership struggles of august charitable organizations knows that Everett has her work cut out for her.

Hadassah has had some success in recruiting younger women — three of its Westchester chapters are “young” chapters, defined as 20s to 50s — but it faces numerous challenges.

“People have a different view of volunteering today,” said Everett. A few generations ago, she explained, women expected to devote their intellectual and social energies to community service. “Now, you approach raising kids as a job, and volunteering is not seen as a necessity anymore; it’s not expected or automatic,” she added.

With more activities open to Jewish women, both in the professional and community-service realm, Hadassah also has a lot more competition that it used to.

But Everett, a Princeton-educated former marketing professional, is confident about her ability to get out the message. She figures Westchester must be full of women like herself at age 34: raising children, eager to socialize and put professional skills to use, and interested in community service.

“When we moved to Westchester, they didn’t have a group for younger women, so I started one,” said the cheerful and articulate Everett, who used to tote her infant son to meetings. “The first meeting was called ‘Boobs, Tubes and Everything In Between,’ with a local OB-GYN discussing medical issues that relate to younger women.”

For Everett, social action is a family tradition that dates to her childhood in Atlanta. Her mother was active with the National Council of Jewish Women as well as the local Reform temple, which her father helped found.

Since giving up her marketing career to raise three children — Eli, 15; Ethan, 14; and Hannie, 11 — Everett has had an active life in community service, dating to the moment 15 years ago when, as a young mother in Newburgh, she sought out charitable work and ended up at her local Hadassah chapter.

Everett also became a more observant Jew, following the lead of her husband, David, an attorney who grew up in the Conservative tradition.

Members of Westchester Jewish Center in Mamaroneck, the Everetts keep a kosher home and send the children to the Solomon Schechter School of Westchester, where Everett is on the board.

To keep busy — that’s a joke for the woman who can spend 20 unpaid hours a week at Hadassah’s Port Chester office — Everett recently launched a career in interior design as well.

In Hadassah, Everett found an organization whose breadth matched her own wideranging interests.

“We’re involved in so many causes; people don’t even realize it, because they associate us with Israel,” she said, citing as examples pro-choice activism, domestic violence services, the environment, and legislation against insurance discrimination.

In Israel, Hadassah funds cutting-edge medical research — a Hadassah medical team discovered the breast cancer gene — trains doctors, and treats patients. Nondenominational and apolitical, Hadassah has raised some members’ hackles with its inclusive policies; its services are available without regard to ethnicity, meaning that Palestinian doctors and patients benefit in Israel, too.

But most new members, who are recruited through friends, find Hadassah’s mission appealing.

“Hadassah kind of rested on its laurels for years, and now we need to raise our visibility,” Everett said.

Most groups meet every few months; events can involve a guest speaker, a “rap” session on a topic of interest, a fundraising or social function.

As executive vice president, Everett was involved in organizing such activities as the Hadassah Leadership Academy, which trains small groups of women in leadership skills, culminating with a weeklong Israel mission; and a recent martini fundraiser for Dress for Success, in which members donated a professional outfit to needy women in exchange for a stiff drink.

The region has also established groups especially for business networking, lawyers and nurses.

“We have a lot of fun,” said Everett. “We’re the best-kept secret in Westchester. Now we need to get the word out.” WJC