Tape #451 - Networking for Social Change

 

 

[inaudible - not using microphone]  Have to get the mike, this is being recorded, ok.

 

I'm interested in networks in general, like I said I'm sociologist, how they work, you know, practically I think networks are wonderful mechanisms for sharing information. The one I'm working on most recently with Denise is the Women in Food and Agriculture Network.  Before that I worked for a number of years with a colleague at USDA, Bonnie Canner and a group called the Agricultural Women's Leadership Network.  But I think it's going to be involved in a panel in the morning so I think it interesting to watch networks and how you networks can link with other networks to achieve common ground. 

 

Denise will be the second to say more about this.  I think that this one is interesting because I'm relating this to a discussion I had just about an hour ago with Barb Leech about the importance for people in agriculture really, and I think, about what the message is and reaching out to urban people more than we perhaps have in the past, and I think in this network we're trying to really, you know, using food as that medium that helps us, you know, to relate to urban people.  Because that's where alliances probably have to be made and that just the reality of the world we live in.  But I think networking can be a powerful way of accomplishing some common goals. 

 

I'm Cecilia [inaudible].  I come from Zambia in Africa, the lower part of the continent.  I initiated an organization called Zambian Women in Agriculture.  And the aims and objectives of the organization is to presently take the development of sustainable and affordable agricultural production for rural women only. 

 

And I went to Australia in 1994 to attend the first ever international women in agriculture conference as an observer because I just retired from teaching and I had just bought myself a farm.  So I said let me go and learn from the women of the world how to run the farm.  When I got there I got so much [inaudible] and so encouraged by the meeting of 850 women from all over the world, from all walks of life that met together but with one common objective and that is to till the land, produce food and feed nations.  That is why today I am here.  I am here for the practical product of networking.  Thank you.

 

Well I'll kind of start this off and give a little history of Women, Food and Agriculture.  I am Denise O'Brien and I farm in Iowa.  I'm an organic farmer.  My husband and I farmed and milk cows for 20 years until three years ago and we stopped milking and he went off the farm for a job and I'm working ten acres now.  We've gone from 200 to 10 acres.  And I produce apples, raspberries, strawberries, pumpkins and asparagus and dry flowers and herbs.  And we changed our farming operation as a lot of people have done in the United States to going off the farm for our income because it wasn't being productive.  We had 40 cows that we were milking.  Our county now in Iowa is bringing in a large scale dairy that's 3,000 cows, so its very hard to compete with anything of that massive size.  So the economic development in our county has been looking at and attracting large dairies and hog operations that turn farmers into workers as opposed to  being a land owner or tenant to raise and produce crops on our land. 

 

So with that change - well over the years I've been very active in the political part, the activist part of farming since the early 80's.  In the United States in the 1980's we had what was called the farm crisis.  And in fact it pretty much still exists in a good number of places in our country.  And out of that 20 years of experience of working with various farm organizations and I gotten a little frustrated with just being never really brought into the decision making process of -- although I was the president of a national family farm coalition, never quite having the weight that I think that women should have.  The voice women should have in agriculture, so a couple of years ago I made up my mind that I was just going to work with women.  I've been involved in integrated organizations for a long time and I felt like they were kind of stuck in one place and there were a number of women who felt this way, it wasn't just my motivation.

 

But prior to the Beijing Conference, a friend and I put together Women, Food in Agriculture Network so we could go to Beijing and do a two-week workshop called the Globalization of Agriculture.  And we found as we were trying to bring women together to do this and to get a delegation of farm women that there was very little resources for us to find the women and that were interested in organic agriculture, sustainable agriculture and food systems in a holistic approach to what food represents in a rural community, the community, the family, the church, the land, the environment.

 

And so it became obvious to us that we needed to help identify start identifying people who were involved in various forms of small time agriculture and that again as we looked into this we found that there was a new type of agriculture emerging and it was the local community food growing C.S.A. which is community supported agriculture which is the type of farming where people were consumers buy a subscription and then are guaranteed so many weeks of groceries of vegetables from the farm and they pay their subscription up front and helps the farmers defray the cost of putting the crop in and then reap the bounty of the crop and take some of the risk with the farmer.  Women are very much at the forefront of that type of agriculture that's moving. 

 

 

As I said we were organic farmers for 20 years and there are coming more and more people in the organic movement and I found during that time that again there were a lot of women that were there during the work, doing the research, doing the experimentation in that, but were never really identified and we'd have a little caucus at a meeting and find out our same interest in that.  But there was there was nothing really communicating and networking us together.  And so coming home from Beijing I sort of had a purpose of trying to help create that communication between networks.  I'd hear something was going on in Wisconsin and I'd hear something was going on in California, but never knowing where to find that person who was doing that or and I knew that the same thing was going on around the world in different places because of Beijing because of some of my international travels that I've done as the president of the National Family Coalition.

 

So over the previous two or three years, we've gotten together a group of women in Iowa that have put together goals and mission statement and that in this issue that we have here as our mission statement, we got like last year we got it together and we laid out some goals and we refined those goals this spring.  We have a very strong purpose in mind and the mission statement says we link and amplify women's voices at whatever.  If it's very general but it brings in a lot of different -- it brings in a broad scope of things and one of those things that we are very interested in is understanding the economics of the situation of agriculture which is leading to the globalization which is leading to the deterioration of our rural communities and understanding that and trying to build our communities and our families in a way that is maybe counter to the current trend of what's going the other way or trying to work in the opposite way I guess.  I find myself in my life I've been doing that a lot.

I think women do.  We have different ideas and different ways of thinking sometime. 

 

So we've been creating this network.  Our newsletter that we do.  We have a woman in one part of the state and she is on e-mail and she sends us out those of us we're not all on electronic mail, but we're trying to get there.  She sends us out notices that articles are due and we send them in here and she's the one that puts them together in the newsletter.  And she likes doing this.  And that really a nice thing to have someone who likes doing this sort of work because it does take work and it takes time.  So we've been lucky to have her in our group and she'll put together the things that people send her.  It's very Iowa centered at this point because we are working in Iowa, but we try to have a global perspective and people in the group have various levels of experience in working with other groups and with other issues and that I think probably at this point in time, I'm one of the most experienced persons because of the path that my life has taken in the political arena of working on national legislation, working on international recommendations.  So I'm kind of stuck and I'm not stuck, I'm kind of working in all three levels like, local, national and international at the same time.  And working to help facilitate our education in all of those. 

 

We meet four or five times yearly.  We don't have a very rigid schedule.  We communicate through electronic mail and through letters.  We have our newsletter that we're doing and there were five women in our network that came to Washington and so I think that we'll be able to share that experience.  We have a meeting coming up in July on July 21st where we'll all probably go back and share this experience, see where we want to go with this, how we continue to reach out to the women in Iowa. 

 

I've talked with women, the women in Wisconsin that are here and we've talked about maybe in November we'll have a meeting of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa women.  There's kind of a central place that is a used to be a convent that is used now for mid-western meetings for sustainable agriculture, organic agriculture and so we're talking about well maybe we'll bring all the women from the three states together there and talk about maybe what we could do on a regional basis and so its very exciting to me that we're beginning to communicate and share our ideas. 

 

And there were a number of women who couldn't come to the conference because they were C.S.A. producers, because they're right in the middle of their vegetable production, vegetable and food production and so we'll relay back to them what they did and we can rotate going to events like this, international events so that we can all have those experiences but continue to build and communicate and work with each other to understand the situation.

 

I think when we're out there sometime working, we feel really isolated and we don't have the support that we need to argue with maybe our local officials about 3,000 cow dairy and why is that coming into our place and that sort of thing and just have someone we can call up sometimes or e-mail to and say I can't deal with, you know, what's going on and I feel that over my years of farming in Iowa and being involved with things that I now finding a true group of support that I can really rely on that will be there and they'll just be there, you know, if its just to listen or if its to call me up and say you know how's that going or can we do something to help, that sort of thing is what's really critical I think to a network.

 

So that's just the basic explanation of what we're doing and I think from what I've explained and I think maybe Cecilia could explain her little part and then I'd like to hear what other things are going on because I know the Country Women's Association has been around for a long time and I'd like to hear some history of that and so we could maybe share some of those things as we go and there's a lot of things I don't know.  So we can find out.  

 

As I have said earlier on that when I came back from Melbourne, I initiated and founded an organization called Zambian Women in Agriculture.  It was addressing almost the same issues that we've spoken about here.  For instances, the women [inaudible] were illiterate, they were rural women and they were worse off than the women in developed countries.  Because out there in the rural area, there are no roads, no bridges, no infrastructure, nothing. 

 

Secondly, the women had no access to credit because they had no collateral.  Thirdly, the women had no tools to till the land and so they couldn't produce much more than they could just use for substances.  But even that was not enough for them.  When its time for drought, or there is a El Nino something like that they weren't able to survive.  Fourthly they were not recognized as producers, as role players in agriculture so that is what I started doing to highlight the role they play in the production of food.  More especially a household food that they eat, but they use for their homes, for their families and later on for the nation. 

 

It was not an easy job.  It was very difficult because the politicians are there.  They thought I perhaps wanted to take run the platform of politics and take over.  As you know in Africa women constitute about 55% of the population and so they didn't really vote in the rural areas for the parliamentarians so it was great opposition, but I said I'm going to go on and I'll tell you that because my objectives were and are to uplift the living standards of rural women farmers.  [inaudible]

 

When I went to my government to ask for funding for this organization, the government says you are on the wrong course.  Because as you know we are structuring. The IMF has directed that  we restructure, the economy is not that good and we owe the IMF a lot of money and we paying back the debt unless you can lobby that for debt relief go to Washington, DC, go to New York, go to Germany and lobby for the debt relief then we can listen to you.

 

And of course I say I'll fly to the United States if you give me a ticket to send me, say I don't have a ticket, so I said well I'm going to deliver the women.  But then one minister came up with an idea that he is going to give the women in agriculture fertilizer inputs so that we can distribute to the women in the rural area.  Of course that was very welcomed by the women in agriculture because they really wanted to have inputs to have high yields and but we did not know that he had a hidden agenda. 

 

I distributed the fertilizer to the women, they were very happy.    When it came towards time for paying back it was lowly.  Had to pay [inaudible] bags to 1 bag of fertilizer.  The minister went down to say don't pay the organization because you are the voters, the fertilizer is yours and because you are the government of the country, so don't pay it back so that was very big drawback because now the government, I mean the bank which facilitated  that loan was on me.

 

And not only that in Zambia women are at the back of everything.  They must be in the kitchen, they must not be seen in a forum like this one.  So when I came out to talk to the women and to the politicians and to my government, they very suspicious.  More so because I was born in South Africa.  I went to Zambia early for marriage. 

 

But in any case let's talk about the black side of things.  These two years we've been able to access credit without collateral.  We've been able to get a check for the organization.  We've been able to land about 50 acres of land which were given by the Chief.  We've been able to have [inaudible] that was donated by the South African government.  Now we are producing eggs and have pigs on the farm and we are starting to build the women farmer center where the women are going to be trained in various activities, you know, so we [inaudible] agriculture production, demonstration, insecticide, pesticide etc.  and [inaudible]   money to do those things.

 

This is a great achievement for the women.  Everybody says so.  And for that [inaudible] activity, the women in agriculture of Zambia even one the word rural summit foundation from Geneva

in rural area.  That is all.  Thank you.

 

Questions for our speakers or more stories to tell?  The mike is here ready for you. 

 

One thing I might just add about women, food and agriculture, we broaden our base beyond just women in agriculture to include a number of educators, environmentalists, citizen activists, so we have a very broad based organization which maybe a little bit unique. 

 

[inaudible] Angola, Mallou, South Africa.  Those are the countries and of course because [inaudible].  I got the motivation from Australia [inaudible].  I've been adopted by the Australians.

 

Are the farm works primarily women in Zambia?

 

Yes [inaudible]

 

I'm curious you said farm workers and you said farmers.  Are there farmers and farm workers or there both.

 

They're both, farmers and farm workers.  The larger group is the farmers. 

 

I'm curious about what I know Farm Bureau women have been around for years and the work they've done and you talked about the Canadian farm women.  I kind of like to hear and have some input about those and share those kinds of experiences, would you like to say something?

 

Ok I'll start at the bottom level I guess.  In Canada the organization to which I belong is called Women's Institute.  We just celebrated our hundred's anniversary last year.  We're primarily rural based and a lot of agriculture, but not totally.  The group I belong to, the branch I belong to is a small town group, but we're very aware of agriculture but that's not our total focus.  Through that network with my own branch once a month, our meetings are on the street as I meet members or whatever and then we have various level structures through the organization where we have opportunities to get together and I suppose to further networking if you want to call it that.  We have our various newsletters from our Providence and Canada and our international newsletter.

 

Funding is great majority of us through our own membership that we pay.  It's not a large amount of money, but it is a membership and that entitles us to membership at the various levels.  So we do get a little government funding.  Our newsletters are I suppose a lot of in-house if you will information.  You mentioned that too I think a lot of newsletters are. 

 

I kind of have a question, I've listened quite a bit this week to networking and I'm not sure if somebody wants to try and answer this one.  I hear of a lot of new networks and I'm aware of a lot  of organizations that have been around for a lot of years, our organization was formed when we have 70 countries, 300 societies, nine million members roughly including eastern Europe.

And I know in the session I was just at, the lady talked about the oldest women's organizations in the state was 1846 or something like that. 

 

So when your networks are formed I wonder if the people who get involved have done research on what's already out there rather than keeping reinventing the wheel because it definitely strength in numbers and in voices and the organizations that have been around a lot of years often have a great deal of credibility built up with governments and decision making bodies and things like that and so I can't help wondering sometimes if that is looked into before another network or group is formed and I don't know if anyone wants to tackle that one.  And how you funds yours?  Is it through membership dues, No.

 

I think one of things that question about new networks form.  I think in -- I'll take Women, Food in Agriculture for instances, it's been, there a new, well it's not so new, but women who are involved in organic agriculture and haven't really found a place to fit in and I think that something that had to be created to fill that nitch, but I know what you mean and I think in my looking over different networks and looking at how things have gone, there is a lot of things that people if something doesn't fit, something you create something.  And I think sometimes it's political, it geographical, its ethnic, there is a lot of reasons and I know it seem like so many times we spend our wheels and do something that's already been done and we think we're doing something so new and it's interesting to me in just looking over things that there I think that's a phenomenon.  Of course I'm not a sociologist so I don't know those answers, but it must be something that, you know is created maybe some organizations have outlived themselves and don't attract because they don't have new and good ideas.  They're stuck and different things and people don't want to waste time and try to change things.  They want to start something new.  It's just, I think a bunch of things that seem to interact to create that sort of thing.  I certainly, I don't have the answer but I think that....

 

I just wonder what the life span is of these organizations?

 

I think you're raising good questions. I am a sociologist and I think we can distinguish between organizations and networks are very different things and networks do not necessarily have to have a formal structure or a long life.  So I think that maybe where women, food and agriculture is we hope we have a long life, but if we don't I think even we knew we didn't we would continue  doing what we're doing because we get so much psychic energy from it. 

 

I think if I can speak of my motivations is I can find no other group or organization I can think of that I belong to that really can I can say I am sick and tired of men dominating every single thing I do, every organization I'm in whether it's I should say especially the university where I work.  They dominate in my college of agriculture, every decision is made by men.  I mean I'm - don't think I'm exaggerating, even what I would call progressive agriculture organizations, men control the agenda.  And I think the women that we're working with are just so desperate to have our voices heard that it doesn't matter whether the women are from the state department of agriculture, the university, representing some of the various farming organizations.  Some of them are teachers, some of them have come up through the ranks as activists.  I think that most of us share this really, this is strong words, but we're really really really tired of it. 

 

We have valuable things to say.  We have unique perspectives and we have many talents, and most of the organizations that we're in, we're really not heard no matter what we know.  So I think we can come together in this group and we have a great deal more power than I think, people might underestimate us.  I don't think we overestimate ourselves in the sense that we know we are women and very often in very marginal positions, but we also know that we have a lot of power among us. 

 

We've literally put on the floor sheets of paper and mapped out the organizations that are out there and we don't think that we are duplicating anything.  We do think we have a bit of unique nitch.  And we are not trying to substitute for other organizations, obviously we will be allies with anyone that wants to work with us.  And we won't give up our other organizational memberships.  But we can link to those organizations and we can link to environmental organizations, mainstream and you know non-mainstream agricultural organizations whether they are women's organizations or integrated. 

 

I think we will partner with anyone that you know that shares our objectives, but probably women first and then probably agriculture food.  But for me personally, its the coming together as women that's most primary motivator. 

 

I guess I'm part of the modern farm women's movement, a network that formed in 1980.  [inaudible] and I was part of the founding membership.  I did belong to some of the other organizations and I did not find myself advancing or were they addressing the issues that I felt that I wanted to deal with.  And so we came together to provide education and support for the women of Saskatchewan, that wanted the same things.  And that's why we organized.  And we have now become a strong advocacy group. 

 

In our Providence we have a small but powerful membership, I believe, a very active membership.  Sometimes we run out of steam, but coming to things like this kind of gives you another kick in the butt to get you going again.  We have a full membership, it belongs to farmers, farm women.  But we do have associate members who are interested in farm women and network with us whether its agencies or other organizations and so we do have an associate membership opportunity that I think you talked about that as well.

 

The motto of our organization has come to be to bring a woman's prospective into agriculture issues and an agriculture prospective into women's issues.  And so we do network with a big base of both agriculture organizations, agencies and governments as well as women's organizations, agencies and governments and working in many many fields.  Sometimes I think we get spread very thin, but we as farm women are interested in many many things.

 

I think one of our strengths has been networking, recognizing the talents of the people within, members within our organization who they can act with, what they're interested in and utilizing them to make those connections and to give us a voice in those areas.  One of our women last week was a podium at a general farm economist bureaucracy conference and she spoke to the fact of what our women's organization did for her.  She is one of the four women delegates at the Saskatchewan wheat pool.  She is one of the director's of SWANN.  She has gotten much further belonging to our Women's Agriculture Network.  She was on the podium there because she was a member of SWANN.  She would never have gotten there as a member of one of the women at the wheat pool.  She is here as a member of SWANN, Saskatchewan wheat pool sent no delegates here at all.

 

So she's one of our women that is saying very strongly that this is the base that is promoting her.  She is chair of the ag operations board in our Providence.  I sit as chair at one of the regional colleges, eight regional colleges in our Providence.  I sit on the farm support review committee.  We have many opportunities because we built a recognition of the skills of our membership and we're there because of our organization.  And I feel very very strongly about that.  But I do say that you have to have a good relationship with your government.  It doesn't hurt that our MLA happen to be Minister of Agriculture, a personal friend. 

 

So by building those networks that has given us the step up and I really feel that even if we only last 20-25 years.  We organized in 1985.  We have done a great job in our Providence for building up the esteem and the recognition for women in agriculture and I see great things have happened. 

 

Yes, people are standing in line now. 

 

Now is a good time, I'll just follow on from where she left off.  I came into Norene and I both are members of the Canadian Farmers Network and I came into the network, she was a founding member and I wasn't.  So I'll just back up and tell you how I got in.  There was sort of a farm crisis in the 1980's in Canada too.  And there was some people who was going to loose their farms.  We're in the [inaudible] area and we just now had seven years of bad or diseases or weather or something else and so we're probably looking at another one. 

 

And the Canadian was having national conferences and they came to Prince Edward Island which is a Providence near us.  Some of our women went there and then when they came home from there they were motivated to start a providential organization in our Providence. 

 

They went I believe a year or two and I became aware of them and my personal motivation was I got tired listening to my husband complain about all the problems in agriculture at the kitchen table.  And I kept saying to him this isn't doing anybody any good, we must be out there saying something.  And really to look around at the general farm organizations that's been there for a long time, I didn't see that they had solved any of the problems and I remember when we were in Saskatchewan there was radio announcer who was a speaker there and he said I want tell you ladies something and I thought about this a lot of time since, I want to tell you ladies something the men has had agriculture in Canada for over 50 years and they haven't solved the problems, so don't put your suit on and go be like them.  I'd develop a new way.  When I get discourage I keep thinking, don't put my suit on and go be like them.

 

And I have found that to be true with the farm women's organization.  We started up our organization in 1986 in New Brunswick and at that time we have a local group and what we're doing is legal rights workshops and dealing with access to financing.  Many of things that we find so common clear cross the world here and so we had a local and we developed a providential, the providential joined the national and it is a farm business women's organization and I really and truly believe that the CFWN is the only totally farm business women's organization in Canada.

 

The WY is there and we partner with them on very many things, but they have in my Providence anyway, they have a rural urban component and they do excellent things and we work with them.  But if I had gone in that organization, I'd had a section of time or section of attention and it would have been rural and if I had the time and energy I'd belong to both, but I can't.  So my energy is in this.  And I have to tell you that I am secretary of the Canadian Farm Women's Network.  I would have never been in that position in a man's organization.  I remember one time when we were going to Ottawa and the government was saying to us, why do you need a farm women's organization?  He said why didn't you just join your Federation of Agriculture which is the men's, its general farm, but their membership is the farm or one man and there is no woman's voice in that organization.

 

And I said to him look I'd been in my grave before I ever got here sitting to talk to you if I had gone into that organization and look here I am, I'm here.  So there's a time component.  I guess I heard somebody say that we as farm women are impatient people.  I guess so, I didn't want to spend the rest of my life affecting policy if that's the way I could do it.  So that gives you a little prospective and I know I'm speaking for many other farm women.  You'd n ever got me to come to conference like this or pick up a mike or do anything that I've done if I had not belong to Farm Women's organization. 

 

So we do press releases and interviews and TV things and everything else and that would have never been in my life.  So for you women who are just starting go right to it.  Don't take as long as we did and for the ones that are rolling, I'm like Norene, I don't know how long we'll roll, but I know that we've done a lot of good a long the way and there's leaders there.

 

Thank you.  I thought of another question I might raise, the question of the role of government perhaps in supporting networks.  In the U.S. I think I can say this that most of the farm women's organizations do not get government support.  They support themselves through a membership or various kinds of fund raisings from foundations or the private sector.  I know in the case of Canada get some support from the government and certainly in the case of Australia.  I'd like to hear from others here about the pros and cons of that kind of support.  I know the U.S. is a different sort of political system.  Sometime I've gone from thinking I wish we had it, but almost being glad we don't.  Because it can turn on you too.  So does anybody have any insights about the pros and cons of support from the government?  We can hear from other countries too. I would like that.

 

[inaudible]

 

In Australia farmer, we have a lot of state support as well.  Oh prior to the Australian conference and I was there with you, Katherine McGowan from Australia came to our farm in Canada parts of her churchill fellowship research study and spent a few days with us and when she was there she was talking about her government wanting farm women to get organized and wanting to support them to be organized and be active and all this type of thing and I said to her well golly what I see in our Providence was grassroots movement wanting to get organized and a government that wasn't supporting it.  So golly if we could get together, we had the grassroots interest and she seemed to have a government that was saying we'd like to raise the profile  and recognition of farm women and help them to do that but they hadn't rally the forces yet, so it seems to me that Australia must have done something and got those two components together because I mean if they're here with 150 delegates something must be working for them that we haven't quite got together yet, pulling it off that way.  And I think it's a combination of both.  I think you have to be able to say to government, we're happy to take your money, but you're going to hear from us.  And we're not going to agree with everything you say and we don't.

 

We've had many crisis even here.  I guess I can speak to this crowd even it's being tape recorded.  I've heard rumblings of this whether women can speak up, you know in the conference, with the government, interagency coordinating council supporting.  It's the same sort of issue if you're taking money from sponsors does that restrict what you're able to say? 

 

END OF SIDE 1

 

and any way on government funding. 

 

From our providential organization, we did start very much supported by the status of women in federal government status of women what you call secretary of state back when with a lot of support from them. But we were always targeted into project funding and so you had to tie anything extra into the project that you were doing.  And sometime the project weighed the organization rather than the other way around, which was unfortunate. 

 

One of the things I see happening now is because we have built ourselves a fair strong reputation, we have some people coming to us saying we'd like to partner with your organization and we have some money and you have the people and you have the expertise and we'd doing some women in health projects now that are that way.  We had people phoning us say we know about this bit of a grant and it made it so hard to keep up with all the grant opportunities and to write proposals is just a nightmare.  It takes all my time and I'm suppose to be a farmer.  So those opportunities kind of coming to us at this time.  We did major fundraising to come to this conference within our Providence and we're very appreciative of our Providential Ministry of Agriculture and post secondary education, we have some other links as well.  And some outside fundraising as well.  We had to work hard in the short time.  We didn't have good notice and we were doing spring seeding when the conference notice came out, but we did go to work and I think our reputation allowed us to do some quick stuff.  But it takes a long time to build that and you do a lot of patting on the back. [laughter]

 

[inaudible]

 

What I'm hearing here is that networks are groups of people so they could be called organizations almost. And then there are networks where five organizations you know send one or two representatives and they meet periodically just to share and pool information.  And those are two very different things.  And so I'm just wondering you know if anyone had any other observations, it's not a question or anything it just an observation and I don't know what the dictionary definition of network is.

 

This, I think, just piggy back on your question.  Because from what you described, much of your activity has focused on advocacy and tried to actually influence government decisions, in addition to  providing some actual direct services and being a space where women can articulate and identify their own priorities and needs.  Could you just talk a little bit about how you think you have influenced government decisions and what they were?

 

Norene has been at that longer than me, but does that make you sound older.  One example I can give you is the agriculture census in Canada.  I know it wasn't just farm women that pushed for that, but Norene probably was involved in it before I was, but from what I was hearing on women's work counts, Canada seems to be ahead on that.  In 1991, we worked with stats Canada and we worked on the task force committee developing the questionnaire to be asked to be developed for the census.  So it was an input from the beginning.  And so the 1991 census included having identifying who the farm operator was on the farm. 

 

The question went and I can remember working on this, the question went, who operates the farm?  And then as farm women sitting there on that we said well the women won't they'll put down their husband's name and so we said you have to put a definition in there that says someone who makes the day-to-day decision, any day-to-day decision and so we now we had 25% the farms in Canada identified to have women owners and operators and still an educational process to go on on that.  There's still women who won't called themselves farmers.

 

Then in 1996 when that census came out there had been a lobby for because a lot of us are unpaid laborers.  And in the meantime, we've been having training courses and everything else to teach people how all that affects them.  But so there was a volunteer component on that voluntary labor component.  We said we got to go back and keep on going with this because if you're a partner on a farm or you an owner/operator, you're farm labor, that you're doing for your husband day after day after day is not volunteer work.   And so it wasn't recorded.  So there's a gap still there.  But we're beginning to get a lot better statistics and that's one way.

 

And I think another thing about lobbying is that it's hard to measure how you've affected, sometimes I say how far are we getting and I wished there was a measurement.  But all I can say to you is when I'm looking at that, I look at what if we had not been there.  And there's been a lot done, like we did - she said we had a lot of funded projects, we've had legal workshops that we're done through government funding that has really revolutionized how women look at their legal positions on the farm.  We've had family violence workshops and studies.  We've had a study on defining the family farm and so there's been a lot of things done that's raised awareness.  The only thing is with government funding, they have, you know, as long as that person's in they have a priority for that funding and then if new people come into government and that priority drops, you're dropped in the middle of your project.  And we found that frustrating.  We're been moving along and doing great things and got cut in the middle.  So there some down sides to it, but I guess if we hadn't gone for it we would have gotten done what we have so.

 

Cecelia just suggested to me that we have a very limited amount of time left now and that we should have a resolution out of this caucus.  Do you want to make a suggestion? 

 

Are you saying we should resolve to adjourn on time?  What resolution did you have ---

 

I was just saying to add to that there's a lot of organizations who worked on that census.  A lot of us came together in Ottawa and had a resolution and a lot of lobbying together on the census, so you can't say it was any particular organization.  It was definitely group even though we weren't working together although some of us were that it certainly was. 

 

Couple other things we have done which helped Canada through the women's institutes was we did a survey across Canada on child care in the rural areas and it was quite an eye opener.  We had well over 50% surveys back.  One Providence had 75% of its surveys back.  We of course didn't get paid for it, but we got paid -- they were expecting 10% result with government - they thought that would have been really well. 

 

And to say how fast we worked, we all got together one weekend and we saw the lady on Friday and yes we talk to the lady on Friday morning, we called her Friday afternoon and said we will have this ready for you on Sunday.  She did actually come in Monday morning and we had everything ready to go for that survey.  We worked on it the whole weekend.

 

We did another recent survey, not a survey actually a project with health Canada gain.  This is Women Institutes of Canada and we did women on substance abuse.  And we had three pilot projects in three communities to find out the substance abuse being alcohol, tobacco, medication various aspects. And its just been completed and in fact just out in print now. 

 

[inaudible]  Was tobacco included in that?

 

Anything that was substance abuse that we felt was, there was no particular one was just any kind.  And it's just out in print.  Actually off the tope of my head I got handed the book before I came down here and I haven't read it yet, so I'm sorry I really -- three Providence in Canada, one had to be Quebec and then two others.  So we tried to sort of pick, one was Newfoundland and Saskatchewan.  We tried to pick an eastern Providence, one in the central and one in the west.  Yes, definitely rural.

 

What were the other two surveys? 

 

Rural child care was a survey, substance abuse was a project.  They had meetings together, well it was in a way was a survey I suppose, but the other was actually a survey sent out to the Providence and targeted people and very specific.  Some had to be single households, but certain types of households that were targeted and we were able to do that because we each knew our own Providence quite well and we have a big network all over each Providence so we're able to do that.  We're in every Providence, yes.

 

Well so that we can end on time, the observation of what networks or networks of organizations or networks of individuals, I don't know as an individual you can be a network.  But it seems as though we used that term loosely and it seems as though things pop up as needed.  It kind of sounds like there's organization that have been in place and do work and network with other organizations and then it seems as though where the void is things pop up and then we become to fulfill a need that that there and I think that there's been good examples of what's going on and that that would probably be phenomenon but will always be a part of people as the needs arise.

 

I want to thank everyone for coming.  I think it's -- I always like hearing other people stories and what's going on and it's I know we getting to the end of this busy busy time that we've been here and gone to all these workshops and I hope that what we've shared here will be something that you can all take home with you and share with the people you are with.  Maybe somebody can up with a definition of a network, whether you have to be an individual or organization.  But thank you all for coming.

 

[Applause]

END OF TAPE