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Hilary Sillars, President of NCWGB for 2002-04, gave the
following address at the opening of the formal part of the conference on
Tuesday, 12 October 2004.
This morning I would like to take the opportunity to talk about two
differing but interwoven issues. The first is what is happening
outside of NCW and secondly to summarise this last year and the work of the
Management Committee within NCW.
NCW is a member of the 6-O, which is also made up of the National Federation
of Women's Institutes, the Soroptomists, the British Federation of Women
Graduates, Business and Professional Women and the Townswomen's Guild. We
have met regularly with each other and twice a year with the WNC and the
Minister for Women, Patricia Hewitt. We have constantly requested that
the WNC hold conferences which can be attended by all of our organisations,
but this has not happened. The first conference we requested was about
the importance of women's organisations to society today, and the second
about the importance of 'silver power', the grey
vote. No one has the time to put on these events or
the money to stage them. We need someone to be fired up with
enthusiasm to put on events, because without them, we do not reach out to
new members or enthuse our own membership to work on our behalf.
Meanwhile, other organisations continue to actively work 'hands-on' with the
issues we raise. Most of them seem to be humanitarian or faith group
NGOs, and have a great expertise in the field. We should be making use
of these young women by asking them to attend our events, not just to speak
at our policy committee meetings. These women are actively involved in
our issues, such as women and fair trade, women and children being
trafficked, women & HIV. If we could reach these women by putting
on a series of our own events, they might just start working for NCW as
volunteers and members. NCW often raises issues first, we set the
agenda for other organisations to get behind. The trouble is that they
do the actual 'hands-on' work, and get paid, whilst we do the thinking, and
that doesn't get paid for in today's climate of funding. These young
women are dedicated to our issues, we need to find new ways to reach them to
get involved on our behalf.
Looking to international networks, four members and an affiliate from the
Asian Women's Conference attended the UN meeting on the Status of Women, and
four members attended the Triennial ICW Conference in Australia. The
President of ICW also visited us at Danbury Street for a useful exchange of
views. Two members visited Barcelona for ECICW and one to
Budapest. The work of NCWGB is still at the forefront of European and
international work. Our conference resolutions and presentations
reinforce the concerns of women world-wide as they focus on fair trade and
the evolving division of labour, or on issues of climate change, poverty and
water, or on countries with huge population losses from HIV. We must
do all that we can to ensure that NCWGB does not lose its voice due to
funding concerns at a time when other countries such as Russia or Belgium
have growing numbers of NCW members. We must do more to show
government and other agencies that we are a voice to be reckoned with on the
European and international stage, and find ways to inform women of our work.
I received an email from the President of NCW New Zealand last week to
remind other countries that they will be organising a National Children's
Day in New Zealand on the last Sunday of October. Their Children's day
has five key messages;
1. giving time
2. listening and talking
3. love and affection
4. praise and encouragement
5. new experiences
In 2004 New Zealand is focusing on the key message of praise and
encouragement. The President then asks that if each country does not
have a National Children's Day, to see if your national Council could look
at promoting and supporting such a day. I think that would be a good
way forward for NCWGB, and I hope that this could be brought before the next
meeting of the 6-0.
What I am going to say next is an over-generalisation, but it is still true
from where I am standing, having represented this organisation for the last
two years. Women's issues today haven't changed much in the last ten
years, we are still looking at the availability and quality of childcare and
care of the elderly, at pensions, working hours, exclusion from schools,
food and the environment. What is different today is that the NCW
membership is now ten years older and less able to work effectively at
national level. This is also because of the way that government
operates has changed. Small groups of different interest groups are
often asked to get together to find new ways of working towards
solutions. I am now thinking of the Women's National Commission.
The WNC has changed the way it works with others over the past two years,
and many women's groups are finding that they are not included in the
decision-making process. Some of our methods are old fashioned
and we are not generally doing the research into every consultation paper
that was the norm ten to twenty years ago. Also, because of the way
consultations now operate, there are considerably more, they are far more
specialised and need faster responses. Our responses are still of a
high quality, but this is because we have a back catalogue of issues which
have been researched in previous times. As I said, maybe this is an
over-generalisation, but it is true of many
responses.
The women now working in these government groups are young, and they know
all the people in whichever government department they find themselves; they
are often on first name terms. They are working women and are the
'experts' in their field. Many of our top members who have put their
names forward to join various agencies or quangos, are not even on short
lists for these groups, as they are mostly retired women. How do we
get government to understand the value of the older person, who has a wealth
of knowledge which has grown throughout her lifetime? - especially an NCW
member who is likely to be conversant with more than one subject, having
learnt from 'experts' in the Policy Committees over many years. Our
research needs to be funded and we need to ensure that we can work in
partnership with other groups, or our voice will not be heard as it will not
be seen to have value.
Nearly all women's groups are now struggling to find the members and/or the
funds to work as they did in the past. Money is given to new groups
with single issues, or groups that organise training and networking
facilities, such as the Women's Resource Centre in London. These
groups have recruited more and more staff, having obtained the funding to do
the work. The funding is for jobs that are reviewed each year, and are
not on-going in many cases. Many are research posts, or marketing positions,
which rely on the funding for a project, and expire when the work is
completed.
This sort of funding and work is something that NCW should have been able to
access and we should have had many people working on the issues that are
important to us. In my opinion, the reason this has not happened is
that we are all working as volunteers. We do not have the time to put
in applications for funding, we do not have the money to get together to
work on the ideas for new projects, as they need to be costed out in great
detail and the exit strategy has to be in place for all work
undertaken. As we have all found over the last few years, each
application has taken too much time, too much energy and takes too many
people to put forward the information for the applications, as we do not
live locally to each other or work in the same building. When
applications do go in, they are rejected as we are not doing 'hands-on'
work. We have been successful for small grants for training our
members, and for events we have staged, but they are particularly
time-consuming to organise.
NCW administration in 2004
We did have a second part-time member of staff until March this
year. Mary looked after the Management Committee minutes and Sendouts,
and helped organise the meetings with affiliates and the conference.
It had been anticipated by the Management Committee in the summer of 2002
that the number of volunteer helpers in the office was going down, as fewer
members lived near London, and that the Officers needed some backup the
other member of staff started working part time. When Mary left,
this work was taken on by myself and Margaret Field, who was already
overloaded with the Policy Committees, resolutions, letters to government
and responses to consultations, plus all the work she and her husband have
done on the website. I am very sorry that no one has come forward to
date as the Vice President for Policy next year, and would like to thank
Margaret in particular for her dedication to this organisation and the work
she has done on our behalf, particularly during this summer when Nuala was
away. We became a full time job for her, I think.
This year, when Dawne Ferguson stepped down, we were unable to replace our
fourth Vice President for Affiliates. Adrianne Jaffe has had to take
on the work of looking after the affiliates, organising two lunchtime
meetings on debt and obesity, as well as looking after all of the membership
issues which arise. Thank you Adrianne for all of the years you have
worked so hard for NCW, we are going to miss you on the committee.
Daphne Glick our national Treasurer has done more than her fair share of
work in this last year. There have been problems to do with tenants
above our office in Danbury Street, employment problems and contracts,
heating problems, insurance problems, and our own financial concerns, also
taking her into the realms of a full time job. She has been an endless
support to me, and has given the organisation every possible help over the
last year, apart from the many other years she has worked on the Management
Committee. Thank you Daphne for taking on such a difficult role as
national Treasurer and making the job your own.
Whilst the President and soon- to-be retiring officers have been working on
the current administration of NCW, Amy Gibbs has been working on future
plans as well as writing the Annual Review for this financial year.
She and her team have now worked on the plans for the future, and she will
present them to you this afternoon. This year the Management Committee
wanted to give members enough time to discuss the issues facing our
organisation. Last year we only wanted your agreement to move from
Danbury Street if we thought it necessary. This year, the plans have
changed, so it will be over to Amy this afternoon to lay out her ideas for
the future.
The Nationally Elected Members all decided to get more involved this year
and took on the role of organising this conference, since the Officers had
agreed they had no time in which to do this. I would like to thank the
Nationally Elected members for taking on this role, and in particular,
Lesley Prout, who volunteered to be the Conference Organiser. Sheila
Coules volunteered to do the conference bookings, so many thanks to her as
well. Margaret Field has had to organise more speech summaries and
re-affirmations than we first anticipated, and has also agreed to write up
all of the letters to government and agencies, following ratification of our
resolutions, so a big thank you to Margaret for her work on the conference
as well. Laura Marshall and Wendy Richardson took on the role of
checking the Yearbook, and thanks go to Wendy who organised the
printing. Jenny Spivey organised much of the material sent out to you
all about this conference and also organised the seminar on Monday afternoon
and the after-dinner speaker. Thanks to you all for making the conference so
full of interesting items and for your work over the year.
The Management Committee and I have worked hard this last year to involve
each member of the team, ensuring that they have time to voice their
opinions and to represent each part of this complex organisation. We
have branch members throughout the country, views from policy committees and
individual members, and, especially, the views of our affiliated
societies. We work together on issues of concern to us all, and I hope
that in whatever way the new organisation is brought together, that your
views will still be heard by each other, by government and by other nation
states.
In my Annual Report at the AGM I will outline work achieved by others within
NCW, but at the moment, I just want to say that unfortunately the work
involved with the 'Quality of Life' project is still unfinished, as much of
the work sent in was not completely written up by the contributors, and I
have been busy dealing with administrative issues, as well as having to cope
with unexpected family illnesses. My apologies to all those who
have put work forward, it is greatly appreciated, and will be my main
priority once I come out of Office.
So, there are many problems facing women's organisations at present, and we
have worked hard in the past year to address these. I would like to
thank you all for your help and suggestions over the last months, and look
forward to the work of this conference to further the aims of NCWGB.
[RETURN TO CONFERENCE
SUMMARY]
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