“Here To Carry Fishing Bags”

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31904, 4 February 1969, Page 2

“Here To Carry Fishing Bags”

“I am here to help carry my husband’s fishing bags and to cook the catch,” Mrs Margaret Barr, the treasurer of the Associated Country Women of the World, said in Christchurch last evening. Although she is not on official A.C.W.W. business, Mrs Barr will visit many old friends in New Zealand country women’s organisations whom she has met at overseas conferences.. Her husband, Mr Mungo Barr, a grain and sheep farmer of Canterbury, England, is keen to see New Zealand farms as well as trying his luck in the country’s rivers and lakes.

' “He has wanted to come to New Zealand to fish ever since I returned home after

my last visit here In 1962 after the A.C.W.W. confer-

ence in Melbourne,” Mrs Barr said.

Besides her responsible office as treasurer of a worldwide organisation, which handles an annual budget of £33,000, Mrs Barr is actively involved in local government. She recently completed a two-year term as chairman of the Eastry Rural District Council, an office equivalent to that of mayor- She. was the council’s first woman chairman.

During her term she saw two major projects completed —a large sewerage works and the council’s first home for the aged. Mrs Barr is governor of a local primary school and the district secondary school as well as chairman of the primary school committee. In the rural district council she is now chairman of the finance and general purposes committee. And she belongs to the Women's Institute movement as well. Her work for the'A.C.W.W. takes at least a full day a week and requires regular trips to London for meetings. Little Time “So you see I don’t have much time left over for hobbies, even though I have excellent help in the house. But any leisure time I have goes into gardening,” she said.

Though she knew nothing about country life when she married, Mrs Barr adapted easily and has set an example to other women in her community service. “I am deeply Interested in the well-being of the women of the countryside,” she said. "I always felt that our bread and butter came from the people about us and I wanted to do my best to help them ” This, at the local level, is the aim of the A.C.W.W. —to help raise the living standards of country women throughout the world. “The A.C.W.W. has affiliates in about 40 countries, including the Women’s Division of Federated Farmers, the Country Women’s Institutes, and the Country Girls’ Clubs in New Zealand,” she said. All my friendships overseas have been made through the A.C.W.W.

By meeting all these women at conferences and on their home ground we realise we hive the same aims and problems-“Three-quarters of the organisation’s annual budget of £33,000 comes from worldwide contributions to the fund we call ‘Pennies for Friendship,’ which 'helps provide scholarships to train women in developing countries in nutrition and child care.”

“Pennies” now have to be interpreted as “silver coins,” Mrs Barr hastened to add.