This year’s August Meeting, the one-week annual reunion of the women wing of Home and Abroad unions of autonomous communities in the South-Eastern States, is now in progress.

The occasion which started as a yearly gathering of women in some communities and as a vehicle for moral rearmament and community development at first merely served to remind them of their domestic responsibilities while meting out sanctions to defaulters as appropriate.  Over the years, this laudable post-civil war get-together, spread throughout the region, while enlarging its agenda to become a formidable vehicle of community development, both in infrastructure and capacity building.

Attendance is compulsory for all married women while funds raised are ploughed into areas of utmost importance to their communities and Churches.  Oftentimes, the women in their wisdom also engage in conflict resolution, thus saving dangerous situations capable of leading to a breach of the peace.  This was particularly so in the areas where their male counterparts had shown gross irresponsibility.  Many communities and parishes today, owe their water boreholes, market stalls, scholarship schemes, classroom blocks, micro-finance and cooperative societies to the funds raised by these women, and church organizations like the Catholic Women Organization (CWO), Anglican Mothers Union  etc., during their August Meetings.

The timing of this annual Meeting to fall in the eight month of the year when educational institutions are on vacation and farm work at minimal level, is most reasonable as the holiday period affords more women the opportunity to attend the meetings.  The timing also serves to access the progress of work on projects or decisions initiated during the previous Christmas and New Year family and community development gatherings.  In this way, women have continued to move the society forward especially in places where the male folk have failed or are engrossed in town union politics or tussle for royal stools.

It is however sad to note that the original goal of the August Meeting appears to have derailed in some communities owing to the contamination by town union politics, and interference from outside, particularly the government of the day.  Wherever selfish political interests are allowed to take the upper hand, development is stalled.

We therefore urge participants at this year’s August Meetings to resist such interference and remain focused on development in their own interest, those of their children as well as those of their husbands.  In those areas where men have failed the society, the women have no choice than to take initiative, if our society is to move forward.

August Meetings has not been without its own challenges, including the inability of some intelligent and patriotic women to attend due to lack of time as well as external interference.  It is also unfortunate that some vain women turn the August Meeting into a forum for unhealthy competition in fashion in places there are no prescribed uniform or dress code. These vain women come there to show off new cars or other symbols of affluence.

We call on participants in this year’s August Meetings to bear the development of their communities or churches in mind.  They should take a cue from the patriotic activities of their fellow women of yester-years who left footprints in the sands of time, and whose burning desire was to leave the society better than they found it.

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