Women’s Institute members are carrying on the tradition of volunteer work, but are finding it a struggle to convince younger women to join the cause.
Long known as an organization for rural women across Canada, WI works to stay current with modern issues while maintaining core values of education and social networking for women.
The issue of membership along with the organization’s concern over social issues figured on the agenda for more than 400 women attending the triennial convention of the Federated Women’s Institutes of Canada in Prince Edward Island June 16-20.
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“You’re trying to promote an organization meant for the betterment of local women,” said 41-year member Doreen Holden of Fertile, Sask., who attended the convention.
The women’s institutes consider themselves as an educational program where members can study current affairs and topics of interest. Today, people can find information on the internet but many young women need basic life skills training like cooking and child rearing.
“Many of those women work outside the home and it is very hard to get them to commit to anything,” she said.
It has been a 20-year commitment for newly elected national president Ruth Blenkhorn of Nova Scotia.
A retired military wife who has lived across Canada and Europe, she and her husband retired to the Annapolis Valley where her sister invited her to join the local WI.
Her board of directors is seeking new approaches to an old problem.
One recruitment idea focuses on the “young retireds,” women who are looking for something worthwhile to do.
The organization wants women to know WI is not just farm women tackling agriculture issues but people who care about the betterment of their community with a focus on supporting other women.
“You can be as busy as you like and you give what you can. We know that some ladies have more time than others,” Blenkhorn said.
“Our motto is for home and country and everybody realized that everyone wanted to work for their home and country,” she said.
“We do make a difference.”
Blenkhorn said it was the WI that advocated the centre line on highways. Alberta WI lobbied its provincial government for the triangular safety signs attached to farm vehicles, which is now law across the country.
WI has also been interested in nutrition, as well as the care of children and women.
The organization started in 1897 when Adelaide Hoodless’s child died from drinking unpasteurized milk. She assumed other women were equally uninformed about such dangers and started groups to educate them.
Today, the national WI office is a national heritage site that sits on her original homestead in St. George, Ont.
The WI is affiliated with Associated Country Women of the World and was the first non-government organization to be conferred status at the United Nations. Through that affiliation, the WI joins a network of nine million members in 70 countries.
A world project is supporting a home in India that houses children orphaned by the 2004 tsunami.
Closer to home, WI members have provided head scarves for cancer patients and pillows and support for breast cancer victims.
They also raised money in the last year to refurbish picnic areas at the international peace gardens on the Manitoba-North Dakota border.
For Brenda Willsie of Wetaskiwin, Alta., president-elect in Alberta, membership is valued. She wants to recruit more people under 50 like her and thinks it’s time members started bragging about the good work they do.
Alberta members support temporary homes where abused women and their children can stay.
They receive counselling, life skills training, financial support and household and clothing donations.
She hopes that kind of charity work will attract younger women.
“We need to show it is more than an old ladies’ club and it is not just for rural women,” she said.
She joined as a six year old in the WI girls’ clubs and has been an adult member for 25 years.
Resolutions at the national convention included lobbying the federal and provincial governments to reassess the financial needs of those living on disability pensions or social assistance.
Another requested the department of justice to impose sentences reflecting the severity of the crime.
The group called for the Canadian border services agency and Immigration Canada to deport illegal immigrants.
A final resolution dealt with the issue of children in foster care.
If grandparents or relatives take in children, they should be paid in the same way as other foster families.
They also reaffirmed a past resolution to ban the use of cell phones when driving.
