E-Learning leads to more

As Australian rural communities continue to face a multitude of challenges, online technologies help to bridge the gaps created by distance. The five topics covered in the E-Learning & Leadership Program include Building Leaders, Better Business Skills, Networking and Social Media, Community Capacity Building and Climate Change Action. Each topic was delivered by a presenter using Blackboard Collaborate, an interactive, online learning environment to the 20 program participants across rural Australia.

Weather the Storm – Women Prepare: update

“It’s like a suburb built in the middle of a heap of paddocks,” Kate Lawrence, project coordinator of Weather the Storm – Women Prepare, describes the location of the first series of Weather the Storm workshops. Filled with young families and a high proportion of women at home, the district of Doreen, south of fire-affected Whittlesea in Victoria, is on Melbourne’s rural fringe.

In this case, the program not only offers advice and knowledge about disaster preparation but also provides a place for other women to meet and network; a mobile childcare service only increases the participants’ engagement. “Some of these women experienced the 2009 fires but all the participants are here to learn about evacuation plans and risk management. In the process they’re making new friends and becoming much more connected to their community.”

From Melbourne’s outer north, Kate will soon travel to sugarcane and coastal communities around McKay, Queensland, to run the next two workshop series consecutively.

For more information on this program or to enquire about holding a program in your area, go to the project website, http://www.weatherthestorm.net.au, filled with information both for participants or others who may be interested.

Board members tell their stories

The NRWC board is made up a of diverse group of women united in their cause to give voice to rural, regional and remote women across Australia. The Wonder team asked them for a short anecdote that illustrated why they’re passionate about that mission.

Irene Mills AM OSJ (Secretary):

“Recently a 98-year-old woman I know fell out of bed and broke her hip. She was in Perth for six weeks away from family over Christmas but the system doesn’t seem to care about that. In our local hospital you’re a person but in the city you’re the person in Bed 59 and there’s no doubt she deteriorated mentally over that time. It worries me that people, especially the elderly in need of critical care in their declining years, have to experience isolation because the necessary resources aren’t available close to them. Rural people face the threat of having to leave their families and communities to go into care. We need care close to home for the vulnerable.”

Anne Whalley (Treasurer):

“A few years ago fisheries in the Burnett River catchment were suffering from a lack of fresh water flows due to the drought. As wild harvest fisheries, water flows are needed to keep our fish stocks viable at commercial levels. We’ve had floods since but, at the time, the families in that catchment weren’t eligible for drought relief. Fisheries in South Australia and Western Australia experienced the same thing. Families were in desperate need of help but there was a obvious inconsistency in the drought relief policy.”

Dr Patricia Hamilton (Vice-President):

“How was it that women farmers were perceived differently from men farmers? Being a leader and decision-maker in a SA Secondary school and co-managing our small Corriedale stud were vastly different experiences. Geoff, my husband, and I shared the activities on the farm. We both went to ram sales; we both worked in the shearing shed; we both delivered lambs; we both managed the farm, yet every time the phone rang about the farm, people asked to speak with Geoff. I was perceived as the ‘farmer’s wife’. I decided to join the women who wanted their voices heard in the field of agriculture so I went back to university to study media representation of rural women in South Australia – followed by a PhD, which explored the journey of ‘Farmer’s Wife to Business Partner’ through women in the grains industry.”