WOMEN’S INSTITUTES

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 13 August 1927, Page 15

WOMEN’S INSTITUTES

NATIONAL FEDERATION. The eleventh annual general meeting of the National Federation of Women’s Institutes was held at the Queen’s Hall, London, recently, with the largest attendance of delegates so far recorded. There are now 3,845 institutes in England and Wales, with a total membership of 234,000; whilst

this year see? the movement, for the first time, independent of the Government grant which has hitherto been accorded -for purposes of organisation. Miss Grace Iladow, Vice-President of the N.F.W.1., who presided in Lady Denman’s absence, owing to the recent death of her father, Lord Cowdray, referred to this fact of economic independancc, and congratulated the institutes on having themselves built up the income necessary to finance fEeir own organisations. She also drew attention to the rapid developing over-

seas of the Women’s Institute Movement as a whole, especially in Southern. Rhodesia and New Zealand. The desire for closer relations by correspondence, and, where possible, by interchange of visits, with Women’s Institutes in other countries, as well as in the British Dominions, formed the text of one of the resolutions upon the agenda, and from the discussion which followed, it was evident that several members in England are already in regular communication with* members of institutions in Canada,