International Women's Day Brunch 2021

Following on from last year’s very popular event held at Te Manuka Tutahi marae, Zonta Whakatane is expecting a large crowd to enjoy inspirational women speakers, delicious food by Sublime Caterers and musical entertainment by local performers over three hours from 11 am.  The four women speakers are Hine Waitere, Margie Agaled-Dinwoodie, Sierra de la Croix and Lisa Wolfsbauer.

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Hine Waitere

Hine Waitere has an impressive list of academic degrees and accomplishments. She is a professor at Te Wananga O Awanuiarangi. Recently she has been a director on a forum advising the Ministry of Education on addressing the inequality of learning outcomes for Maori students.

Margie Agaled-Dinwoodie

Margie Agaled-Dinwoodie is based in Tauranga and runs Shakti, an organisation which supports migrants from Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Her background is in social work and she has supported women experiencing domestic violence. Sierra de la Croix is a scientist with Scion Rotorua, a Crown Research Institute. She is also a member and past president of Zonta Rotorua. She has been involved in many activities and events to promote gender and racial equality.

Lisa Wolfsbauer

Lisa Wolfsbaueris of Samoan and Dutch heritage.  She and her husband have recently returned from living in the USA for two years. Lisa is a schoolteacher and a trained facilitator for ‘Creating peaceful pathways – an alternatives to violence programme’. She has mentored and coached young people in sports and empowered young women in education.

Zonta Whakatane hopes to raise the profile of the club and encourage more women to join. The objective of Zonta is to support girls and women locally, nationally and internationally.  Recently Zonta Whakatane created an installation of chairs and shoes at Wharaurangi highlighting the disturbing figures of deaths by domestic violence in the Bay of Plenty and NZ and giving out posters with phone numbers of organisations that help in a crisis. Currently, the club is in negotiation with the District Council to install posters with crisis numbers in female public toilets.  Another project for 2020 is to support the local branch of Grandparents Raising Grandchildren.  There are many grandparents, mostly grandmothers, who have taken over raising their grandchildren without any respite. Dealing with the reason, often some kind of trauma experienced by their own child and the responsibility for young ones can be hard. Carleen McCormick, the coordinator of the local group welcomes assistance from Zonta to support these grandparents through the S.A.L.T. program.

When purchasing a ticket for the International Women’s day Brunch through EVENTBRITE you can also make a donation which will go towards one of Zonta’s projects.

Book online via EventBrite