NCJWA



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NCJWA celebrates TWO new OAMs
In the recent Queen's Birthday Honours List, Carolyn Goldsmith, President of Brisbane Section and Di Hirsh, National Director and Chair for Interfaith and Interculture, were honoured. Their citations both bore reference to their lengthy dedication to NCJWA.

We congratulate them and their families on receiving this honour.

The 2009 National Plenary Conference in Perth coincided with celebrations for the Western Australia Section's 80th anniversary. The anniversary was marked with a gala dinner on Saturday 6 June, which was attended by National Board members, WA Section members and supporters, representatives of Jewish and non-Jewish organizations, and government representatives.

Guests at the dinner included the Minister for Heritage, Local Government and Ethnic and Multicultural Affairs, the Hon. John Castrilli and Mrs Loretta Castrilli, and The Honourable the Lord Mayor, Lisa Scaffidi and Mr Joe Scaffidi. The Lord Mayor delighted her audience with her keynote address, in which she spoke glowingly of the work of volunteer organizations such as ours in working with so much dedication for the community at large. Fiercely proud of the City of Perth, she praised all those who work for the benefit of the people, mentioning causes we support, that include a variety of health research foundations, service organizations and our own Maurice Zeffert Home.

Four long standing and dedicated members were honoured as Life Members of the Sections: Luba Braude, Ethel Brown, Eve Cohen and Jenny Shub. Mazeltov to all on this richly deserved recognition of their outstanding service to Council and the community.

Their profiles may be found at http://www.ncjwa.org.au/sections_view.php?section_id=7.

LIVING HISTORIES is a project recently completed by Melbourne's RMIT in conjunction with NCJWA. RMIT students carried out a series of interviews with elders of NCJWA in Victoria, producing filmed interviews in which those women talk candidly about their lives and the influences that made them who they are.

This project is an attempt to capture some essence of their stories, a snapshot of their lives and of the history they’ve witnessed. Some of the women are relatively new migrants to Australia, others migrated to Australia as survivors of the Holocaust, while others have been in Australia all or most of their lives.

The first-hand testimonies act as guides or touchstones for younger generations. This project aims to provide a model for inter-generational and intercultural digital storytelling, linking young people as creative producers with the older women.

The interviews may be viewed on the Living Memories web site. For background on the project please click here.

MUM FOR MUM is a project of our New South Wales Division. Young mothers and their babies are teamed with volunteer older women in a programme designed to assist young parents who are without close contact with mothers / grandmothers of their own. The project has gone from strength to strength since it was launched, and now it has a website of its own.

This may be viewed at http://www.mumformum.org.au/.