Pan Pacific Women To Confer In Tonga

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30219, 26 August 1963, Page 2

Pan Pacific Women To Confer In Tonga

Queen Salote has invited the Pan Pacific and South-East Asia Women’s Association to hold its international conference in Tonga in August, 1964. It is the first time she has invited any international conference to meet there.

The P.P.S.E.A.WA. president, Miss Jessie Robertson, of Perth, said in Christchurch yesterday that Queen Salote was president of the group in Tonga, and took an active part in its work.

Miss Robertson will leave New Zealand on Tuesday for Tonga, where she will make arrangements for the conference. She will then spend five days in Fiji, setting up plans for a post-conference seminar to be held there.

Arriving in New Zealand on Saturday for a brief visit, Miss Robertson attended an executive meeting of the P.P.S EA.WA. of New Zealand in Christchurch. In the afternoon she addressed an open meeting of the Christchurch area group, on the flexibility of the organisation’s programme. Giving examples of the organisation's adaptation to every country in which it works. Miss Robertson spoke of a nutrition course for women in Taiwan. Women were being taught to prepare Chinese meals with powdered milk, which enriched the food content. Moslem members in Kuala Lumpur were working with e group of persons who formerly lived "by bow and arrows'* deep in the jungle. and had been brought out to live in a roadside village.

In New York, a centre for Asian girls was being built. Some Thai members were interested in a sociological survey of the lower Mekong river. Miss Robertson said, Development plans there would necessitate the moving of hundreds of people and members would help with adjustments and education before they were moved, In Western Australia one of the biggest aspects of the organisation’s work was in looking after Japanese warbrides, forming friendships with them and ensuring their happiness in Australia. In some states, work was done with aboriginal girls, assis.ing them as necessary with clothes and _ schoolbooks and taking an interest in their welfare. Representing millions of women in about 20 countries, the PP.S.E.A.W.A. works

mainly with the peoples of developing countries, Miss Robertson said. It is affiliated with some United Nations programmes, including educational programmes through U.N.ES.C.O.; the Status of Women Coinmission; the International Labour Organisation in regard to employment and work conditions of women, and the Freedom from Hunger Campaign. It had been asked to participate in World Health Organisation seminars.

One of the greatest compliments paid the organisation was when a group of African women, at a meeting held at Addis Ababa in 1960 by the United Nations division of human rights, had decided to form an association of African women along the lines of the P.P.S.E.A.W.A.