LADIES who lunch were out in force for The View Club’s annual conference on Saturday.
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With strong women like the Smith Family’s Learning for Life team leader Fiona Brierley and The Leader’s editor Fiona Ferguson as guest speakers, the event was an opportunity to catch up and be inspired.
The View Club national councillor for area NI Beryl Pike said a number of clubs celebrate their 50th anniversary this year.
“I like to have speakers who are strong women, who can tell us about their journey in life so far – because everybody has a story,” she said.
“We support and fundraise for the Smith Family and the Learning for Life program, which is a student program to assist young, disadvantaged Australian children.”
View clubs across Australia sponsor more than 1,200 disadvantaged children, and began in the 1960’s when a man named George Foreman was working for The Smith Family.
Realising the organisation needed an injection of funding, Foreman turned to the women of Australia to help.
“He decided that women in the 60’s weren’t going out a great deal, they were more housebound than what they are now,” Ms Pike said.
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“He thought an organisation that could be given a focus of going out, meeting with other women and doing some fundraising would be a really good idea.
“Now we have over 1500 women that are in this organisation nationally, every state has View clubs in it, in this area alone we have about 580 ladies involved.”
The club exclusively supports The Smith Family, which started with five men visiting an orphanage.
The men noticed the children weren’t going to get any gifts at Christmas, so they decided to fund the presents themselves.
When they were asked who the gifts should be attributed to, the men replied ‘The Smiths’, and that’s where the charity originated.
On Saturday, Ms Brierley spoke to the women about the children at Learning for Life, the program and how fundraising helps.
The Leader’s editor Ms Ferguson spoke on her academic journey, travel and work experience.
More than 100 women from Moree, Coonabarabran, Narrabri, Manilla, Glen Innes, Inverell, Tamworth and Gunnedah attended the event.