Several guest speakers addressed the gathering at the North Arm Cove Community Centre on Friday 7 March.

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Tea Gardens Lions member Lyn Chaikin, spoke of being born in a country town before working for Qantas, where she took part in a Thomas Dooley Foundation program to work in Nepal with Tibetan refugees.

“I met the warm and caring Tibetans who wove and sold carpets, worked in a children’s nursery in a Tibetan refugee camp, and taught ESL at the Queen’s orphanage and at the hospital,” Lyn said.

She began a concerted program focused on genuine hygiene, starting with a strong campaign to ensure babies got washed regularly, and teaching the locals to boil their water before using it.

Lyn’s work later took her into Villawood Detention Centre, where there were many confronting scenes.

But none of it has dulled her perspective.

“That life has been a big, big adventure,” she said.

The second guest speaker was Vanessa Palfreeman, an organiser of Caring for Kiriwina, a charity focusing on helping the 50,000 people of a tiny island in the south-eastern reaches of Papua New Guinea.

Kiriwinans live by subsistence farming, mainly yams and fishing, and have no running water or sewerage.

They are part of a shell-trading ‘Kula Ring’ in the Milne Bay Province, which is run by local chiefs, with strong input from the Church.

“The New and Old Testaments remain the only actual books written on Kiriwina, both translated into the local language by outsiders,” Vanessa said.

“There is a limited health service, no actual doctor and almost all the births are attended by Village Birth Assistants (VBAs) – strong women with an evolved sense of community.”

Caring for Kiriwina was set up to help the VBAs with simple things such as birthing kits.

During Vanessa’s first trip there in 2013, they stayed in very basic huts built above the ground and most of the villagers gathered around at night to use the power, charge phones and listen to music.

She has been back twice and had recently planned another visit.

“P&O sponsored a trip to get us there, but Tropical Cyclone Alfred, which was forming in the Pacific Ocean, prevented us from landing on the island, even though it was heartbreakingly within sight.”

Jan Peeters, organiser of the high tea, said that over the years the event has raised over $100,000 for International Women Australia.

“The Committee has decided to focus future donations on more local charities in future,” she said.

Member for Port Stephens Kate Washington, who also spoke, described the decision to donate locally as “a beautiful one.”

By Thomas O’KEEFE