A woman’s conversation and wellbeing group has opened doors for new Kiwi women living in Porirua.

The group is providing a safe platform for our new Kiwi women to speak, share, learn and, very importantly, connect in Porirua.  As well as visits to the library, ‘Dress for Success’ and a local women’s health practitioner, we were able to get together and celebrate International Women’s Day in March.

Not only were our learners excited about this event, but helped to put the celebration together. It was a real team effort that included learners, teachers, office staff and our centre manager Jacqs Wilton.  A special lesson was created with all the trimmings! We asked North City Pharmacy for items for gift bags as ‘thank yous’, made up the gift bags, blew up far too many balloons, selected a song that we could learn to sing and we danced to this as a fun finale to our celebration.

It was a real blast – a mixed group of learners and staff all coming together as women.

We read about some well-known inspirational women, shared stories of women that inspired us, talked about what we love about being women, we looked at things that we were proud of ourselves and talked about self-esteem and how to develop and maintain high self-esteem and we sang the fabulous song ‘You Don’t Own Me’ (from the comedy movie First Wives Club), and pledged ourselves to ‘Choose To Challenge’ gender bias and inequality.  Then of course we ate – as that’s one thing that we really do well across all cultures.

Not only did this celebration allow our new Kiwi women to share their successes but it allowed them to celebrate something innate and be part of something international. And they got a nice little feminine gift bag.

Watch this space for International Women’s Day in 2022 …