WPF 2016 Bridge Day

WPF Chair, Alice Oppen OAM, had the audience spellbound when she talked about world population and consumption of resources…

Will our grandchildren take more than their share of resources from other people’s grandchildren?   How will they not?  The current UN prediction of population growth is for 8.5 billion people by 2030, over 11% added to us.   People are pouring out of Africa into Europe.  Sea level rise is already impacting around the Pacific, and increasing numbers of people will become desperate.

Should women be unable to say how many children they can bear?  That ancient patriarchal assumption that women and children belong to men has led in some cultures to subjugation, even here to a handicap in careers and equal pay.  In countries where there is access to family planning, women’s status has risen so we can strive for full, healthy productive lives.

Women’s Plans Foundation started at this frontier twelve years ago, because the importance of family planning was controversial and there was limited appreciation of its power to benefit women, society and everyone’s impact on the environment.

Women’s Plans Foundation has grown, now provides $70 k a year to four excellent NGOs.  At about a dollar a day added to existing services, around 70 thousand women a year have access to family planning as a result of our focussed funding.

Where there are women who need to be freed from more pregnancies than they can bear, in a world of crises and borders, how can we not link understanding with action?

And here’s what we can do:

• We can encourage and fund family planning in overseas aid, to reach people most in need.
• Long acting contraceptives women can control, such as an implant under the skin in the arm, release women from perpetual childbearing, improving health and the ability to raise socialised human beings. It doesn’t matter if men can’t be bothered with condoms.
• Women increase the level of education for all and add value in enterprise and government

Over 60 guests enjoyed playing bridge or mah-jong on Thursday 7 April 2016 in a wonderful Hunters Hill home overlooking Sydney Harbour. With welcome coffee and delicious light lunch on the terrace there was time for mixing around as well as the games of the day.

Hostess, Marian Moufarrige, made everyone feel most welcome and organiser, Meg Milne, assured everyone that all proceeds of the day support family planning, the work of WPF. Meg, supported by a wonderful team of helpers – Helen, Juju, Pauline and Adrienne,

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