Tag: mentoring

General, Politics, Women's History

Grand Matriarchs Worldwide

WHN / May 30, 2013

Let us meet, inspire, support, connect, network, mentor, learn, think and plan.

In our homes, families, schools, community neighbourhoods, villages, town, city, country.

Yes and worldwide via the internet so come blog on this website and tell us what is possible.

We do this now, wherever we are, in every way, every day, in all that we do.

In the small and big tasks we undertake daily in child and maternal health, girls education.

Resisting bias and taking steps to prevent and eliminate violence against women and children.

With our collective activism we can achieve in all the ways that we are already familiar with.

Biography, Politics, Source

Descended from a Matriach – Part 2

WHN / October 28, 2012

It was the late 1960s and we were gearing up for the 1967 referendum. The Doug Nichols Hall had been established by that time, and members of the league came in to work, we had photocopiers everywhere, and they were going all the time. We printed thousands and thousands of pamphlets and cards to be handed out at voting booths. Uncle Doug and Stan Davey, as well as the directors of the Aborigines Advancement League, were being interviewed on radio and television constantly. When the referendum was won, we had a huge celebration at the Doug Nichols Hall …

Biography, Politics, Source

Descended from a Matriarch – Part 1

WHN / October 27, 2012

I wanted to be a nurse, but the family put a veto on that, because three or four members of the family had been to nursing training and they were not treated well: they suffered racism. Also at the time Mum worked in the hospital in the children’s ward as a cleaner. She didn’t think it was the best area for me to go into.

My family wanted me to work in a bank …

Biography, Politics, Source

Soaring with Eagles – Part 2

WHN / October 25, 2012

Lillian Roth once said her life was never her own, it was charted before she was born. Boy, you’d better believe it. Within a month or two I met an Englishwoman who had lived in India for 11 years and had vowed, after the spirit and vivacity of India, never to return to her homeland. She was looking to fill the void, and found it through workign voluntarily with fledgling Aboriginal organisations adn people. At the time I didn’t really know this, it is only in retrospect, but on first encounter she hugged me like a daughter and I was to become like a daughter, for she became my second Mum, my ‘migloo Mum’, for want of a better word. (‘Migloo’ is a Queensland Aboriginal term for ‘whitefella’.)

Biography, Politics, Source

Soaring with Eagles – Part 1

WHN / October 23, 2012

Oh sure, Mum pissed me off at times, as she cautioned me against this and that. That I needed to relax, was still too highly strung, needed to slow down, stop impressing ‘the snows’ (which is what she called whitefells) and told me to believe in God. At the time, this was a bit too much for me, especially the remarks about God, as I was a card-carrying Marxist and hell bent on changing the world. When I did object, she’d tell me I was getting a bit too big for my boots and would cut the conversation short by saying: ‘I don’t know what they teach you at uni, Lillian, but it certainly isn’t manners!’

Event, Politics, Women's History

Girls & Boys Come Out to Play?

WHN / June 10, 2012

‘Some [Girl Guide] accounts eulogize girls who were models of patience. One girl who had to lie in bed all the time made friends with the birds who flew in. In 1946, Daphne was presented with the ‘Badge of Fortitude’. She spent all her life in a plaster bed but could still do gardening from her spinal chair was ‘the friend of all the children in the neighourhood’. Nevertheless, pictures and stories of girls [with a disability] at camp also emphasized the value of the outdoor smells, sounds and relative freedom to blind girls, or how ‘”higher-grade”’ defectives’ were almost the same as other Guides, and badge requirements should remain the same …’