WOLFVILLE, NS - Four executive members of the Grande Pré Women’s Institute made a visit to Eastern Kings Memorial Health Centre in Wolfville July 19 for the unveilling of equipment purchased with the donation by the WI a few months back.
“Today, we acknowledged a generous donation from the Grande Pré Women’s Institute,” said Sue Daniels, site lead at Eastern Kings Memorial Heath Centre.
Each year, the provincial Women's Institutes decide on a project and local branches are encouraged to participate by contributing in some way. This year's project is supporting local healthcare services, so the Grande Pré group contacted the health services manager at the EKM to find out what they could do to help.
“With the funding they provided, we were able to buy a data logger and some Mindfulness Way Workbooks,” said Daniels. “The data loggers are used to help with the blood collection work done here, they allow the temperature of blood samples to be tracked and logged, and the information to be handled accurately and efficiently between Wolfville and Kentville.”
She adds that the workbooks will help with mental health training.
“The workbook is used as part of the community-based programing for mental health services, a program called Cognitive Based Training, which is basically helping us to think about how we react to situations and change our behaviour and think about how our emotions are, so this workbook is the curriculum for the Mindfulness Way class, a series of classes that our mental health folks put on. It’s very, very popular and we’re constantly in need of these books.”
About the Women’s Institute
Women’s Institutes were founded in Canada well over a century ago, following the vision of an Ontario woman, Adelaide Hunter Hoodless, who was one of Canada’s most creative social reformers at the turn of the 20th century. She was convinced that women held immense potential for social change, not simply through the involvements outside the home but even more through the influence they had on their own children’s upbringing. With better education, support, and especially improved health care, women could become ever more powerful influences for good in their homes, their local communities, and their world. This was her vision, and Women’s Institutes were soon established across the country and beyond, eventually reaching around the globe, with the sole purpose of improving the lines of women, and though them, the lives of all people.
