A Service to Country Womenby a Country Woman

Manawatu Times, Volume LV, Issue 7025, 8 December 1932, Page 2

A Service to Country Womenby a Country Woman

This is how Miss Violet Macmillan describes the Homo Science Service which the Victoria University is about to inaugurate through tho generosity of tho late Mrs. Sarah Anno Rhodes, who made a bequest for the purpose of establishing a service of lectures and demonstrations in domestic matters for tho country women throughout the Victorian University Collego area. It is planned that tho real work shall begin early next year, and at present the lecturer, Aliss Macmillan, is making preparation and establishing an office, which in order to bo moro centrally located, is at Massey Agricultural College, Palmerston North, not at. Wellington. Although this type of work is new to this part of New Zealand, it has been carried out through Otago and Southland by the Home Science Extension Service of tho Otago University for tho last threo years. Miss Macmillan was one of the travelling lecturers for two years, and then os the holder of a Sarah Anne Rhodes Travelling Fellowship, for a year investigated the value of extension education in domestic matters in tho countries where it is most successfully being carried out. This research took her to the United States of America, Canada, Great Britain, Belgium, Holland, Benmark, Norway', Sweden, Finland, and i.he Australian States of Victoria and New South Wales.

In each land the same matters were studied—first, the conditions of life for country women; their standing and importance in the community; their organisations and tho infiuenco exerted by them through their activities; their training and education in domestic matters, and tho importance they attach to such training. Secondly, tho assistance, if any, given by the State, universities or other interested authorities in helping the women’s organisations to provide the educational and other facilities desired by their members. Thanks to this previous experience and the interest and advico of the two large country women’s organisations in New Zealand, the Women’s Division of the Farmers’ Union and the Women’s Institutes, during the last mouth it has been possible to draw up an outline of what it is proposed shall bo the scheme of work for the next year. First it has definitely been decided to work through the existing women’s organisations and not to form a new one, and the executive officials of the Women’s Institutes and the Women’s Division of the Farmers’ Union have approved of the suggestion that the local brancli officials or a joint committee made up of representatives from the two organisations shall take all the responsibility for local meetings, meet incidental expenses, advertise, and see that the lecturer’s time in their district is used to the greatest possible effect. As the area covered is so large and there is to be only one >"»*>»rer, it has year into four parts, concentrating on one district only in each quarter , of tho year. The. first year districts will bo Mannwatu, centred at Pahiatua (course commencing in March), Wanganui, Taranaki, Hawke’s Bay (centres and dates to bo decided later). In each district it is anticipated the following will be the routine:—

1. A large organising meeting at the centre eho'sen, attended by all women interested and by representatives of women’s groups. Here all the questions of subjects wanted, number and type of lecture, placo and time of brancli meetings, etc., will be stated and discussed, and a central committee set up to assist in making programmes and plans.

This meeting will be held well in advance of the commencement of the courso in any district, so that everything, down to dates and times, can be planned. Then tho lecturer will arrive and take up her residence in the district, travelling from meeting place to meeting place and from home to home, holding lecture demonstrations at smaller public meetings, and where several women are anxious to continue the studying subject under discussion, for a small l’co local study groups will be formed. Here the women will have time to practice new methods of dressmaking, cookery, etc. Tho courses would last probably for three days from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., or once a week for three weeks, as timo and the wishes of those attending permit.

At tho conclusion of tho seven weeks of residence in the district it is hoped to hold a combined meeting and social, where results of tho visit will bo displayed and discussed and plans for tho following year drawn up. Groups not included in tho first year’s-programme and any others which wish to receive materials for studying some aspects of home-making, when it is not possible to have a lecturer in person to give a talk, may apply to hire box lectures. These consist of lectures prepared by the Otago Home Science Extension Service, and arc sent out complete with illustrative materials in boxes to Study groups. (They are not intended for use at general branch meetings.) Whoever is appointed leader receives the lecture box, studies it beforehand, secs that any necessary equipment (such as scissors and paper for cutting out patterns) are at hand, and leads the discussion when the lecture is read. Boxes arc rather costly, as they take a long time to prepare, and for this reason the new service may not be ablo to produce any of its own. However, Otago will supply us with them at as cheap a rate as possible. This leads up to tho general consideration of the financial side. The Victoria College will provide from the Sarah Anne Rhodes Fund the Salary of the lecturer, office assistance and expenses, travelling costs, library and equipment; but the local people concerned are asked to pay for local expenses. This practice is followed abroad and in the south, and has proved most satisfactory to both parties concerned, tho women feeling that since they were getting real value from tho service, it was both sound economy and sound ethics to .pay something for it, whilst the service, with so much saved from its limited funds, was able to extend over a much larger area and to reach further into the back-blocks. Materials used in cooking and other demonstrations should be provided or paid for (food cooked at demonstrations is “sampled” by those present). Also tho cost of lighting, heating, advertising and hire of meeting place, and tho billeting of the lecturer in country homes. In Otago very often when someone wanted the advice of tho lecturers about something in the home she would especially request that the lecturer be billeted with her, and the matter looked into on the following morning.

All this, then, is what has been proposed, and it is for the country women to say what use they can mako of it, what subjects are the most interesting, what problems the most urgent in their district. A circular letter has been sent to all Women’s Institutes and Women’s Division of the Farmers’ Union branches, asking them to “mako known their wants,” and it is hoped that the first organising meeting—at Pahiat.ua —may be held either this month or very early in February.