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Te Ao Hou, Spring 1954, Page 55

Maori women are taking an increasing interest in community affairs. At the Maori Community Centre, Auckland, Mr Waaka Clark, a Maori Welfare Officer, explains a point to the remits committee of the Maori Women's Welfare League. (Photograph—Vogue, Auckland). (Continued from page 9) Branch, which consists of a minimum of five members, and which sends two delegates to its District Council; then the Distrct Council, which sends two representatives to the Dominion Council, which elects an executive committee. The League Branch stands at the high-water mark of the League field work. It is the ground where experiments are carried out, where the conclusions of the Dominion Council are tested, and where the insight of the executive committee into Maori welfare problems is applied. In its activities, the Branch works on the first level of social welfare, that it, it aims to serve members of specific areas. Because of this, each Branch chooses work best suited to the circumstances and environment of its members. For example, the Branch of the Wellington city area, known as the Poneke Maori Women's League, appoints two members as official visitors to Arohata Borstal and the Alexandra Maternity Home. The Branch members offer to billet any parents visiting Maori girls in these two institutions, supply Christmas presents and Christmas cakes, materials for knitting and sewing, and send any girl celebrating her birthday a birthday cake. They also attempt a ‘follow-up’ of each girl through correspondence, though this is more difficult. This valuable and commendable work falls naturally to the lot of a city branch of the League. There is, however, a general overall pattern of activities for all League Branches. At their fortnightly meetings all branches learn and practise Maori arts and crafts, and some European ones as well. This part of the League's work is, naturally, of particular interest to Maori members, but has also drawn European women interested in Maori material culture into the League. Besides this, all branches conduct monthy meetings where homecraft competitions are held regularly to encourage interest in gardening, sewing, knitting, cooking, and home decoration. What members learn from each other in this way is

supplemented by talks from outside speakers on topics such as health, housing, and education. Every branch submits an annual report to the district council, which allots a trophy to that branch which has most thoroughly carried out its aims. The present holder is the Waikato North District Council. The work of the Dominion Council and its executive committee is of a different kind, and in some ways more important, in that it has nation-wide implications. It consists mainly in collecting as much material as possible on Maori problems generally, deciding what the League can do, and placing the information before the annual conference. Conference may be described as an opportunity for delegates to meet departmental officals and put their problems before them. The full importance of the conference can be appreciated by looking at the topics discussed—education, child welfare, health, employment, and housing; and the resolutions and remits arising from these discussions. At the last annual conference held in Auckland, last April, several important resolutions on new problems were passed, and certain unsuccessful remits of previous conferences were reconsidered. For instance, most of the government's answers to the remits on housing, forwarded from the 1953 conference, were not accepted by the executive committee; and the same remits were sent back to the housing division of the Maori Affairs Department. It is to be hoped that the League's concern with the Maori housing scheme will eventually achieve as much as the League's recent survey of the allocation of State houses to Maoris in Auckland city. In that case the allocation has since been substantially increased. Another remit returned to the Government in amended form dealt with the teaching of the Maori lan guage to students in Training Colleges. Orig inally, this remit asked that the language should be included in the curriculum, but the amend ment now suggests, and more reasonably, that methods of teaching the language should be taught in the College. Perhaps the most interesting resolution of the conferenc was one which concerned the League's own organisation, and called for a revised constitution. A remit was sent to the executive committee asking that all member of the Dominion Council be resident in their own districts. This remit seemed reasonable enough, but its rejection by the executive emphasised, and I think rightly, the League's paramount need at this stage is for a vigorous central body which must meet regularly and frequently; at a minute's notice if necessary With members spread over the length and breadth of the country, this would obviously be impossible.