Alphington CWA: more than craft and baking
In normal times, Alphington CWA meet on the first Monday of the month here at ACC.
At the moment they are meeting more regularly on zoom and have also been busy:
Sewing surgical gowns for Western Health Foundation
Collecting warm clothes for drought and fire affected families in East Gippsland and the North East of Victoria, and
Working on building up stocks of handmade items. Keep an eye out for the return of their fundraising craft and cake stall to the Alphington Farmers Market in (hopefully) the not too distant future.
Today I am again handing you over to Michelle Fidler, who is kindly sharing with us her latest CWA report. I hope you enjoy this insight into the bits of CWA that are beyond craft and baking.
Country Women’s Association of Victoria Inc Determinations in COVID19 times
As I typed up the Minutes of the Alphington CWA Branch May meeting, which was held via Zoom on 4 May, I noticed the Country Women’s Association of Victoria’s Determinations for 2020. It is almost as if someone knew what a strange and disturbing 2020 it was going to be.
The COVID19 state of isolation way of life we have been living since mid March cries out for us to implement the CWA Theme for 2020 – Grow, Connect & Improve. We have had to grow or increase our patience, and our capacity to embrace change and make the most of it. In doing so we have found ourselves more able to connect with one another both within our families and across our communities at a time when it would have been just as easy to shut down and wait it out.
If you had told me in January that by April my extended family would be having a video gathering from eight different locations across Victoria and interstate every Saturday evening, and that every one of us – from the young adults to my 88 year old mum (herself a CWA life member) – would make sure that we participated, I’d have shaken my head and thought, “Sure, SOUNDS like a good idea”.
For many the inability to physically meet or visit their loved ones has been difficult. It has forced us to find ways and means to stay in touch – many of which have meant us embracing the electronic age far more than we would have but for the arrival of COVID19. For others, it has led to re-connecting with some family and friends that they might not normally have found the time to meet with. A quick video call or text message does not seem so out of place or random, when it is the only way we can “meet”.
Which brings me to the CWA Victoria Social Issues Focus for 2020 - Building Communication Skills in Times of Stress. I would hazard a guess that when the Social Issues Committee selected their focus for 2020 they never imagined that instead of a topic that Branches across Victoria would discuss as a concept that they might identify or assist with in their communities, the members would actually be personally (and for some professionally) building these skills on a day to day basis. I would challenge anyone to contend that we haven’t all, at some time in the past few months, found the situation we (and indeed the whole world) are currently coping with stressful. Navigating a “new normal” is tricky and stressful at the best of times. When that “new normal” is a moving feast with guidelines and recommendations that not only change on a daily, and sometimes hourly, basis, but are also often unchartered waters, it is all but impossible to find our equilibrium.
The communication skills that have served us best during this period of uncertainty and stress are those that embrace kindness and compassion. Once the initial panic buying phase passed (which I am sure we are all embarrassed about – even those of us who did not go down that path), the overwhelming reaction has been one of looking out for others; checking in on elderly or vulnerable neighbours; introducing ourselves to locals that we had previously not met; asking what we can do to help.
I believe that the “normal” we find ourselves with when this pandemic is behind us will in many ways be different to the “normal” that we lived pre-COV19. I would like to think that having had many of the fripperies (what a great word!) of life taken away from our day to day existence, we might not return to the excesses of the past. This would certainly result in us having achieved the third part of the CWA Theme for 2020 – improve.
Michelle Fidler, President, CWA Alphington Branch
