by Jodie Dolling
The participants of the Certificate IV Community Services and Community Development course hosted a group of up to 50 people on March 8th to celebrate International Women’s Day.
An interesting array of speakers commenced with local Finniss identity and life time activist, Silver Moon. She shared her early memories of protesting against unjust situations and also her international experiences speaking against American nuclear sites in the United Kingdom. Max Adlam followed with an overview of her work in the union movement. Max is an advocate for all workers in a male dominated field. We were able to see the benefit of the union movement which has some very good victories. The third speaker was Kim Blenkiron, winner of the 2011 rural women’s award as a community capacity builder. From a rural background Kim has created her own business to support and empower rural women. She talked of her own experiences on Kangaroo Island as a young married woman and the steps she took to overcome disadvantages.
All speakers were extremely interesting, diverse and easy to listen to.
After a delicious lunch served by Lyn and Jen, there was an open forum for questions from the assembled group. Sue and Lyndall were emcees for the day, but all participants contributed. We were able to show our guests our course aims and thank everyone for coming including the WOW group who included this day in their program.
All in all, a very successful day, celebrating past, present and future triumphs for women. A great learning outcome for all.