Women speak at Zonta breakfast
Zonta Hawke’s Bay will be holding an International Women’s Day breakfast featuring a panel of Hawke’s Bay women at the Napier War Memorial Centre on March 8.
Four prominent Hawke’s Bay women will be speaking in a panel format at the breakfast sharing their experiences and discussing the issues women face today.
“The purpose of IWD Breakfast is firstly to celebrate the successes women have achieved internationally right from the very first breakfast in 1911.
“Women have achieved in all areas — socially, culturally, academically,” Zonta Hawke’s Bay President Rizwaana Latiff says.
“It’s also held to highlight the fact that even though we have come so far we still have a long way more to go. I guess it’s a regroup and continue the good fight,” she says.
The theme for this year’s International Women’s Day is ‘each for equal — an equal world is an enabled world’
Panellist Caren Rangi plans to base her talk on the theme.
She will be speaking on her world view as a Cook Islands woman living in Hawke’s Bay and her thoughts on what an equal world looks like from her perspective, among other topics.
Caren holds a range of governance roles in New Zealand and the Cook Islands.
She is deputy chair of the Arts Council of New Zealand, board member for the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, and board member for Radio New Zealand.
In 2018 she was awarded Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to governance and the Pacific
Caren Rangi holds a range of governance roles in New Zealand and the Cook Islands. community.
Field intelligence officer Sue Guy, who was awarded a New Zealand Order of Merit in 2017, will be another of the four panellists.
She has worked for the New Zealand Police for 27 years and has started youth initiatives with her colleague such as the Youth Driver Education Programme and Wa¯ hine Toa.
Claire Hague, director of education for Hawke’s Bay and Tairawhiti will also be speaking.
Claire has worked in the education sector throughout her life at Napier Girls High School and EIT, has been a Napier City
Councillor, and runs a leadership mentoring and advisory services business.
She was honoured with ONZM for services to education at the 2007 New Year’s Honours list.
Successful music student Katherine Winitana will also be speaking at the breakfast.
Katherine was the inaugural winner of the Vodafone New Zealand Music Scholarship where she studied a Bachelor of Commercial Music at Massey University.
She currently studies at the New Zealand Opera School and will be doing her honours at Waikato University this year.
She has directed Project Prima Volta students, assistant directed for the Festival Operas 2019 and 2020 productions and organised several events in Hawke’s Bay and Wellington.
This year she aims to audition for a masters in classical voice in London and San Francisco.
“The women on the panel have overcome obstacles in their lives to achieve what they have, and I think what we will get from listening to them is not only motivation but a sense of pride and achievement,” Rizwaana says.
International Women’s Day is a global celebration of the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women and a call to action for accelerating gender equality.
According to the UN, the first International Women’s Day gathering was held following the Copenhagen initiative on March 19, 1911 in Austria, Germany, Denmark and Switzerland.
Tickets are $55 per person or $500 for a table of 10 and can be purchased at events.humanitix. co.nz/hb-iwd-breakfast.
Funds raised will support Zonta local and international projects.