Message from NRWC President Alwyn Friedersdorff  

Homelessness Roundtable
Is small house design the answer to increasing the number of available homes? It’s often said that home is where the heart is, but for thousands of Australia’s homeless people that thought is in the realm of fantasy.   
Those of us who attended the Roundtable in Hobart were certainly dealing with reality as we amassed a mountain of information that shocked us, challenged our comfortable lifestyles, and prepared us for formulating policies on the serious issues of homelessness, and more importantly relating it to our RRR women. We discovered that it is such a hidden issue that the true data is not available. And it’s critical that having informed ourselves, that we now let our government representatives know that housing and homelessness issues are important us. Our e-Leader participant, Nan wrote that ‘we are all be just one step away from homeless’, because it often can only take one crisis occurring in our lives to turn it upside down. We hope to have our findings and report ready by September.

e-Skilling
Our newly branded e-Skilling sessions have begun. Some very exciting and adventurous videos are being produced by those in the 3 session Social Media
e-Skill group and more that 20 keen women for local government are currently broadening their skills in 5 sessions through this amazing opportunity to create change aimed at improving the gender balance as well as offering the best women for the job.
The Australian Local Government Women’s Association of Tasmania celebrated 40 years of supporting other women and I was proud to be asked to speak and offer some words of encouragement towards a future of women who make it their business to lift other women up.

NRWC Annual Meeting
Scheduled for October, there will be some changes to our Board with some Directors moving on, which always creates a mood of sadness but also one of optimism because we know that there are so many extraordinary women in RRR Australia with incredible talents that will create change and opportunity. This next month is when you need to respond to our call for Independent Directors.
 
Communications Reference Team
What exciting news! We have been joined by some astounding women from across the country, who are willing to assist in driving our social media news platforms increasing our team up to 15 members which will ease the load of those contributing to the busy information flow world. Welcome ladies! I will highlight you all in the next round of news.