Hello and welcome to our first newsletter of 2025. I hope those of you that managed a bit of a break this summer had a relaxing and recharging time.
The club executive committee also took a bit of a break over Christmas and New Years, but we are back into it, and had our annual planning meeting early this month. We have lots of interesting plans for our dinner meetings and look forward to your support and attendance again in 2025. Just a reminder as we get into 2025, please confirm your attendance to the dinner meetings at the earliest opportunity. We also recommend you pay for your dinner online if possible. Please reach out if you don’t have our bank account number. No shows to the dinner will continue to need to be paid for as the club is charged for the meals we have booked. In February we recognise Red Bag Day. Red Bag Day represents how big the gender pay gap is. As of June 2024, the gender pay gap in New Zealand was 8.2%. This is the difference between the median hourly earnings of men and women. As women in New Zealand, on average, are paid less than males, by my calculation women would need to work to Monday 3 rd February 2025 to earn the same amount as men earned in 2024. The gender pay gap is even bigger for Māori, Pasifika and Asian women, and disabled women. Using Stats NZ’s median weekly earnings of $1343, an 8.2% gap is equivalent to $110.13 per week difference. The government launched a gender gap toolkit for businesses to complete as self-assessment. You can find out more information on this from the Ministry for Women / Manatū Wāhine website. https://www.women.govt.nz/gender-pay gaps/gender-pay-gap-toolkit This website has a large amount of useful and interesting information. The good news is that the gender pay gap (June 2024 figures) within Taranaki is lower than the national average. In Taranaki men have median hourly earnings of $32.70, and women have median hourly earnings of $30.74. Resulting in the gender pay gap within this region being at 6.0%. Still a way to go. Southland has a gender pay gap of 0% with equal median pay at $31! At the other end of the scale Nelson / Tasman / Marlborough/ West Coast region has a gender pay gap of 12.7%. We have come a long way since the Equal Pay Act of 1972 and the Equal Pay Amendment Act 2020 but there is still work to do by many businesses right across New Zealand. Along with this theme we have Kirsty Jamieson as our guest speaker this month at our dinner meeting. Kirsty is a P&C (People and Culture) Business Partner at Fonterra. Kirsty is going to talk to us about some aspects of the gender pay gap, and what can be done to close gap including at the recruitment stage. Kirsty is also a very entertaining and engaging speaker so come along and bring your friends. Please also bring along a red bag, if you have one, to represent the ongoing fight for equal pay for equal value work for all women. Save the date: Saturday 3rd May and Sunday 4th May is the BPW NZ AGM and conference in Auckland. Please let our club executive know if you are keen to attend and be one of our club delegates. As you might have seen from my email recently, Catherine Trowbridge our club Treasurer has stood down from her role due to personal reasons. I would like to thank Catherine for her efforts as Treasurer since October 2023. Its so good to receive her feedback that she learnt a lot during that time, and now feels more confident using Xero. Just goes to show the value of stepping into a role on the committee as a development opportunity. A huge thank you to Dee Werder-McCrea who offered to pick up the treasurer role! To view in full click here...
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This year is going fast, roll on summer and more predictable weather than the ups and downs of spring we have had so far.
I’d like to thank those that came along and supported the AGM last month. There was a lot to cover. I’m excited to welcome Cindy Koen onto the club executive committee as our new club secretary. Please support her in her new role. And thanks again to Anita who stood down from the committee at the AGM. Anita has been a great support to me since I have been in this role. Congratulations to our new club vice president, Anna Dunlop-Paaka. As agreed at the AGM the proceeds from all our raffles for the next year are all going to the Taranaki Health Foundation to support the new Cancer Centre at Taranaki Base Hospital. In the new year we will also kick off a working group to review our annual scholarship criteria. Important information about club dinners going forward: We are very lucky to have Trish open SomeDay Café for us each month for our club dinners and serve us such lovely meals. This can only happen if it is viable for her business. We need to pay for the number of meals booked. We have had several no shows or last-minute cancellations for dinners from members that we have booked dinners for in the past few months. Trish prepares meals based on the numbers we give her on the Friday before the dinner and numbers are reconfirmed on the Monday morning if there have been changes. We know life happens sometimes that result in having to cancel coming to dinner when you have already RSVP’d that you would be there. If this occurs, we ask that you cancel as soon as you know you will not be there. Any no-shows or cancellations after the Sunday afternoon prior to the dinner will need to be paid for by the member. Secondly it needs to be economically viable for SomeDay Café to open especially for us – so regardless of numbers attending we will have to pay the Café for a minimum of 12 meals. Its only happened once or twice since we have been at SomeDay Café that we have had less than 12 attend a dinner but we need to support this local business. So, in summary: let us know if you will be attending the dinner meeting before the deadline (Friday afternoon before the dinner). Also let us know if you, or any of your guests, have any dietary requirements. The newsletter has the dinner information each month. We also follow up with an email to those that we haven’t heard from. If you need to cancel your attendance/ meal for any reason, do so before the Sunday afternoon before the dinner. Thanks for your cooperation. I know we all enjoy SomeDay Café’s meals. November’s dinner meeting is going to be another busy one. We are going to announce and present our Women’s Education Scholarship to the recipient. Gwen Cater and I are going to be the speakers this month. As many of you are aware Gwen and I were lucky enough to be selected by our company to attend the Global Women Activate Leadership programme in Wellington this year. We want to share with you all some of the highlights and value we got out of this four-month programme. End of year/ Christmas celebration dinner: Monday 9th December is all booked for our annual BPW Hawera Christmas get together. As per previous years partners and friends all welcome to attend. We will again carry out the annual $20 Gift voucher swap for those that want to participate. Bring along a $20 voucher from a local business to the December dinner. That way you get a nice voucher back from someone else and we support local businesses. We are also planning some fun activities. We will send out an invite a little bit closer to the date with more information. I have just completed a Leading Wellbeing Workshop designed for people leaders. It was a fantastic session, and I got a massive amount out of it. This news letter is too short to share all the helpful tips but to summarise:
To view in full click here... 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... Your club needs you! (on 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 and join our committee to help us organising monthly dinners and regular speakers.
Applications for our Women’s second chance scholarship closes on the 24th September. The criteria for application is simple, be over 21, be a South Taranaki resident and let us know how you will use the funds to assist you with your studies. Applicants do not need to be members of BPW Hāwera. So continue to spread the word. You can find the application form on our BPW Hawera Website here. Reminder BPW Hāwera will be participating in the Te Hāwera Community Board: Community Group Expo in September. It will be held at Hāwera Community Centre from 10am to 2pm on Sunday 15th September. There will be free entry to members of the public. This is a great opportunity to show case our club, our scholarship, how we help the community, and provide support for Women in South Taranaki, nationally, and internationally through BPW. Any more volunteers to turn up on the day and support would be gratefully appreciated. We are putting a raffle together for the day. If you are able to donate something for the Raffle Hamper please email our BPW Hawera gmail account to contact one of the exec committee to pick the item up/ or drop the item off to. We have our annual wine fundraiser running this month. Please distribute the order form to your friends and family. Our guest speaker for September’s dinner meeting on the 16th September is Heather Kadlec from the Taranaki Health Foundation to talk about the Taranaki Cancer Centre. Each year on September 19th in New Zealand we mark Suffrage Day to commemorate the day we became the first self-governing country in the world to give women the right to vote. You can read more about it here. We are also getting closer to gender-equal representation balance in Parliament too, 46.3% of current MPs are women. Reminder again that October is our AGM. We are really needing two or more volunteers on the committee – especially someone to pick up the secretary duties. Please think about supporting your club in this small way – many hands make light work. To view in full click here... I start this month’s newsletter acknowledging the sad passing of our past member Karissa Ririkore.
She fought so hard to spend more time with her young family. In her role as midwife, she touched so many lives in our community and loved her job. Our thoughts are with her whanau. Moe Mai Rā, Karissa. I recently had an online call with Teressa Gehrke, the current president for the BPW Denver and Colorado Virtual chapters. As many of our members are aware, BPW Hāwera twinned with BPW Denver officially in May 2020. The Twinning Charter is an agreement to pursue common interests, common goals and build a closer relationship between the two clubs. Teressa and I have started reinvigorating the twinning relationship so you can see a bit more about each club on our websites. As part of our conversation, we realised our clubs do have a lot in common. We are planning a meet and greet for all our clubs’ members the weekend of 19th October – date and time to be confirmed. More info coming into your inbox once we confirm details. You can follow BPW Denver and Colorado Virtual on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/bpwdenver/posts/?feedView=all Our Women’s second chance scholarship is still open for applications. The criteria are simple, be over 21, be a South Taranaki resident and let us know how you will use the funds to assist you with your studies. Applicants do not need to be members of BPW Hāwera. So spread the word. You can find the application form on our BPW Hawera Website here. BPW Hāwera have been invited to particate in the Te Hāwera Community Board: Community Group Expo in September. It will be held at Hāwera Community Centre from 10am to 2pm on Sunday 15th September. There will be free entry to members of the public. This is a great opportunity to show case our club, our scholarship, how we help the community, and provide support for Women in South Taranaki, nationally, and internationally through BPW. We would love to have one more club member to volunteer to help on the day. We can sell raffle tickets on the day – so we are asking for you to donate something for the Raffle Hamper if you are able to. Bring it along to this month’s dinner or contact one of the exec committee to pick the item up/ or drop the item off to. We have our annual wine fundraiser kicking off from our dinner meeting this month. We have the lovely Jess Reid as our guest speaker. Also at the dinner individual club members will be asked torespond to a very short survey on non-discrimination within BPW to collect information for the national BPW Issues Taskforce. Coming up we have already organised our guest speaker for September – more info in next months newsletter, but it will be Heather Kadlec from the Taranaki Health Foundation to talk about the Taranaki Cancer Centre. October is our AGM. We are really needing one or two more volunteers on the committee – especially someone to pick up the secretary duties. Desiree has kindly filled in in this role for much of this term but can’t do the role long term. Please think about supporting your club in this small way – many hands make light work. Tip for the month: Work and Live Life with Enthusiasm Enthusiasm comes from entheos meaning to be divinely inspired (possessed by a god). It is strength, joy, grit and sweet. Choose enthusiasm:
Leadership choice:
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