1939 - Convention Report

              T W E N T Y - F I R S T PROVINCIAL CONVENTION 41
Mr. Putman asked me how the Department of Extension, Department of
Agriculture, might assist our girls' work best; it seems to me that group
training courses for leadership would be very beneficial, we need supervisors.
Many times clubs have failed to organize because they could not get leaders,
and others have died when their good leader has left them. Another way is to
have demonstrations ready for them, along the lines of better home making
and better living.
Miss Isobel Noble, one of the past great leaders of our girls answered
when I wrote her for highlights of her term of office: " Highlights? Why
it was all highlights. Every day stood out in my memory with special
significance."
It has occurred to me that there should be a space for the name of the
Supervisor of each Club, and it should be put on each monthly report. It
would be of great service to the Provincial Supervisor.
In the past two years, the Club work has progressed well. Two new
Clubs were organized in the north, Grimshaw and Enilda, and they are
doing . grand work. Their reports come in regularly, and they show that
they are earnest and worthy of all the help that they may be able to get
from their Supervisors, the Provincial Supervisor, and the Institutes under
whose auspices they were organized. At the close of the year there were 48
reporting Clubs, but there are more, bringing the number to fifty- five and
the membership to well over five hundred active willing workers. At times
it seems to be hard to get Clubs to report, and we learn that they are active
through different sources, Conveners of the Constituencies, and others who
may know, but in general their reports come in regularly. Twenty- two Clubs
have started reporting already this fall, which is a very good proportion,
considering that they are probably waiting to learn the name and address of
their new Supervisor. From many of these have come very kind messages
to me regretting that I am to quit working with them, but I know they will
give my successor the same fine co- operation.
If you are wondering just what our Clubs are accomplishing, I am
prepared to give you a fair idea. The individual programmes are worked out
in each Club, with the help of the Supervisor. While speaking of Supervisors,
I am g'oing to make a few remarks about them. There are two distinct types
of Supervisors, one who believes in doing all the work for the girls, the other
that contents herself with planning and suggesting, and no matter how her
fingers itch to do the work, just lets the girls carry on from, there, even when
she sees them making mistakes, perhaps, or going forward haltingly, and
awkwardly. The latter is much preferable, as it is the only way in which
the girls can grow, and develop the self- confidence and ability to carry on by
themselves.
We have some grand women acting as Supervisors of our Girls' Clubs
throughout the Province; I have had wonderful letters from many; I have
met many who have accompanied their Clubs to Olds for1 the Convention,
and they will agree with me in what I am about to say, I know. Ladies, if
you can. give time to be Supervisors of Girls' Clubs, you will need all the
tact, patience, perseverance, humor and wit possible, and you will need to
have time to do some studying, too, to keep up with the bright young minds
of your Club girls. You will have to be ready to make suggestions and be
willing to have the girls differ from you and not embrace your suggestions;
yet I think that you will find that in the main, they will adapt your ideas1,
varying them to suit their own. That means progress. Often you will throw
out a hint that will come back to you so glorified through their co- operation
that you could almost lose track of the fact that the original idea from which
this big movement sprang, really was yours in the beginning. If you women
who may become Supervisors, can qualify, then you will get the greatest