October 2024

So much to cover this month, so grab a cup of tea, coffee, or glass of wine and settle down for a read.

First up welcome to the new members that have joined our club in the past couple of months, Priyanka Raj, Jess Petersen, Cindy Koen, and Aathirai Lingarajah. So lovely to have you join us.

Thanks to the members that came and helped at the BPW stand at the community expo day in Hawera last month. Helen, Linda, Marissa and Anita – you are stars!. We received quite a bit of interest from potential members and had a lovely raffle with all proceeds going into our scholarship fund. Cindy and Aathi signed up as members on the day which was great.

Coming up we have our opportunity to Meet and Greet online with BPW Denver members. We twinned with BPW Denver in 2020. You can check out their website here. The meet at greet will be at 11am Sunday 20 th October New Zealand time. (Will be Saturday afternoon for the Denver members). If you haven’t seen the invite in your inbox, please flick an email to our BPW Hawera gmail account and we will get the invite out to you.

Our dinner meeting this month on the 21 st is our AGM. We have our normal AGM requirements to cover, and a couple of fun activities planned as well. In addition, Jacq Dwyer is going to pop in briefly to update our club on the battle against Seabed Mining. As you are probably aware our club put together a resolution against seabed mining and it is now BPW policy. It is very disappointing therefore to see it has been included in the fast-track projects list.

We are still looking for a couple more members to put their hands up and support the club by joining the committee. We have had a current committee member indicate they are not going to continue in their committee role after the AGM in October, and we still need someone to pick up the Secretary role. Desiree has been filling in for some of the secretary role but can’t do this long term.
Please have a think if you can support the club. Its not a big workload at all, but it will become so if it lands on the shoulders of just one or two people. Please step up and join our committee to help us with organising fun monthly dinners and regular speakers.

To make it easier for our dinner coordinator please RSVP if you will be attending dinner on the 21 st by lunch time Friday the 18 th October.
Following up from our interesting speaker last month, Heather Kadlac from Taranaki Health Foundation we got the message loud and clear that if we want to have a better level of healthcare we need to support the redevelopment of Taranaki Base Hospital. For those that missed the presentation there will be a new East Wing Building – home to Emergency, ICU, Maternity, Neontal, and radiology. Very exciting for all of Taranaki is the new Taranaki Cancer Centre.

Patients requiring radiotherapy treatment can have their treatment here rather than travelling down to Palmerston North. This means patients can also sleep in their own beds during treatment rather than having to stay away from family, friends, whanau, and fur-babies. In addition, there will be a Mental Health Rehabilitation Facility. Our member Anna took action after Heather’s presentation after hearing Hawera hospitals ED required a new TV and donated one on behalf of Dunlop Insurance. Awesome Anna! Our club also indicated it wanted to do something to support – so we have a proposal we will discuss at our AGM. We want to set a goal and donate to support the Taranaki Cancer Centre.

Applications for our Women’s second chance scholarship has closed for the year. The scholarship
panel will interview and hopefully the winner announced shortly!

Desiree and I, along with Rebecca Treeby, recently attended the BPW New Zealand Leadership Forum in Auckland held at Butterfly Creek. A highlight for me was our guest speaker, Dr Karanina Sumeo. Karanina is the outgoing Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner, Acting Chief Human Rights Commissioner, and Acting Race Relations Commissioner. Very inspiring speaker – she pointed out despite how far we have come, the amount of human rights conventions New Zealand has signed, we still don’t have equal pay, we still have violence against women, we still have harassment in the workplace. She pointed out that dignified retirement for women can only be achieved if we have equal pay in place. The quote that made an impact with me was “No advocacy is wasted”.
Desiree also officially received her Gold Keys to Achievement at the Forum. Well done Desiree – it
was a massive amount of work carried out over several years and it was great to see you recognised at the national level.

Scary to think about but the end of the year is looming already. We have pencilled in Monday 9th December for our annual BPW Hawera Christmas get together. No further details as yet – but as usual partners and guests welcomed.

Tip of the Month: The breast screening mobile clinic is in Hawera until 13 December 2024. Follow this link to signup or call 0800 270 200 if you are due for your 2-yearly mammogram.

To view in full click here...