YOUTH CONFERENCE AT OSLO

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 11, Issue 33, 26 May 1947, Page 4

YOUTH CONFERENCE AT OSLO

Y.W.C.A. DELEGATES FROM N.Z. MANY SUBJECTS STUDIED Students of the stately folk dances of the Scandinavian countries will probably be not a little startled when the New Zealand delegates to the Christian Youth confernce at Oslo, Norway, break into rousing Maori hakas and action songs. The New Zealand Y.W.C.A. will be represented by three young women, Miss Fay Aldridge, of Dunedin, Miss Ngaire Grundy, of Auckland, and Mrs Murray (formerly Miss Heather Dunning, of Auckland) who is at present in England. Miss Aldridge and Miss Grundy, who sailed in the Rangitata, have been in Wellington for the past month acquiring information which will be useful at the conference.

“First and foremost, we are going to be representatives of New Zealand, and we want to be knowledgeable ones,” said Miss Grundy. Social services, the educational system, health, housing, and rehabilitation have been some of the subjects studied. A Maori member of the Y.W.C.A. has been assisting the girls to learn songs and hakas, and they have also attended classes at the Training College Club. Average Age 25 Fifteen hundred young people between the ages of 18 and 30 years will attend the conference, which will open at Oslo on July 22, and will be presided over by a young Norwegian pastor. This is the second gathering of its kind, the first having been held at Amsterdam in 1939. It is being sponsored by four organisations, the World’s Y.W.C.A., the Student Christian Felowship, the World’s Coun•cil of Churches, and the World’s Y.M.C.A. Representatives of 60 countries will discuss the problems which face the youth of today.

French grammar books have also had an important part in the preparation study, as delegates have been brushing up schoolroom French. The conference will be conducted in French, German and English.

Miss Aldridge has been general secretary of the Dunedin Y.W.C.A. and Miss Grundy a member of the activities staff of the association’s Auckland branch. Both have high hopes for the conference, and feel it a “marvellous” privilege to be able to meet the youth of countries which have been our enemies for a number of years.” “We shall be able to learn a little more of their outlook on life. Altogether it should make for better understanding between nations,’ said Miss Grundy. After the stay in Oslo, the girls will go to Wendelsburg, Sweden, for the .“follow-up conference” to be held by all Y.W.C.A. delegates to Oslo. Miss Aldridge. will then go to the World Y.W.C.A. office at Geneva for further study, and Miss Grundy will go to England until they return to New Zealand in February or March of next year.