At our first meeting of the year David Harnish and Maxine Barry gave a presentation called “The Charm of Bali and Its People.” The presenters have traveled many times to Bali, worked with the people there and charmed our group with stories of their experiences, complete with wonderful slides.
In October, we were privileged to hear about growing up in Mongolia from our own member Temuulen Sunid with extra comments from her daughter April, seven years old. Isabelle Lu Christopher prepared us for the Singapore conference with background information on the status of women there.
We learned more about the culture of India from Sujata Hegde, who was born in southern India, spent most of her formative years in Bombay, and emigrated to the U.S. a dozen years ago.
We support the DOSTI schools in rural Pakistan. DOSTI School #10 bears our name!! Abida Kahn, the sister of the schools’ director spoke to us about the experiences of the children in the schools and shared photographs of the children.
Elizabeth Balint arranged a lunch with Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur and other active women from the Toledo area to support International Women’s Day. Elizabeth and many of our other members participate in the Great Lakes Consortium which supports training in government and NGO as well as commerce.
Mihoko Ogawa, a doctoral student at the University of Toledo spoke to us about the conflict between traditional and modern family values as they affect Japanese women in the work force. On another occasion, several members supported the visit of a delegation of Lebanese women who were training for NGO organizations.
We celebrated May Day by hosting a tea for a visiting Hungarian pianist, Noemi Maczelka who was accompanied by our own Margaret Barron. Margaret has since been invited to perform in Hungary in October with Ms. Maczelka!!
Ginney Schlicter gave us a super report with slides on the Singapore Conference.
I must close this report with the sad announcement of the passing of our beloved Marge Wilson. Marge was extremely active in PPSEAWA and other international organizations. She was past president of both the Toledo Chapter and PPSEAWA, USA.