adminThe Herald
1 April 1981
LACK of transport was the most inhibiting factor in the lives of rural women in many developing countries, the world president of the Associated Country Women of the World, Mrs. Ziny Westebring Muller said in Salisbury this week.
Without some means of transportation, they were unable to take their sick, children to hospital or to sell their produce.
In an interview, Mrs. Westebring-Muller who was elected president in May last year, said that the ACWW now has nine million members in 66 countries. The organisation has affiliations with 300 other groups throughout the world, with which it maintains close contact from its London headquarters.
“Our aim is to try to help women, all over the world so that they can help themselves,” she said.
Seminars organised by local people who are members of the association for rural women on health, child-care, literacy, nutrition, and income generating projects.
“We cannot, stress sufficiently the importance of educating women, for when we educate even one woman then we educate an entire family,” Mrs. Westebring-Muller said.
The association, which now has two permanent representatives in New York attending sessions at the United Nations, one with UNESCO in Paris, another working with the FAO in Rome and close ties with UNICEF, started from small beginnings.
In 1928 a splinter group levelled criticism at the international committee of women’s organisations to the effect that the intellectual level was impossibly high. The aims and aspirations for women at grass roots level was being overlooked.
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