The Active Women and Girls Program is a rolling program from the Queensland Government which provides funding to not-for-profit local and regional sport and active recreation organisations, state level sport and active recreation organisations to ensure quality participation opportunities for women and girls.
The $15 million Active Women and Girls Program aims to boost sport and active recreation opportunities for women and girls in Queensland.
The program aims to encourage greater participation of women and girls across all facets of sport and active recreation, from playing to coaching and volunteering to umpiring and team management. Gliding has a low participation rate for women with less than 10% female members, something that needs to be addressed.
The Warwick Gliding Club made an application to run an Introduction to Gliding Weekend solely for women & girls. It was successful with a $7,500 grant application with the intention of creating more participation opportunities for women and girls in gliding in SE Queensland.
The event was planned on the weekend of 21-22 July coinciding with the Jumpers & Jazz in July event in Warwick. It was to offer 24 women and girl participants from various backgrounds with a strong local presence giving them an opportunity to experience the thrill of gliding in a supportive and encouraging environment with female instructors, tow pilots and club members.
Warwick has a limited number of women in our club, but all four committed to attending and helping on the day. That gave us a tow pilot (Val Wilkinson), an AEI (Les Milne) and 2 mentors (Michelle Dodd and Millie Williams). In addition, our neighbouring club, Darling Downs Soaring Club (DDSC), was approached to loan a tug and 2-seater to give enough capacity to fulfil the plans to offer 2 Air Experience Flights to each participant.
Several months prior to the weekend we contacted Sarah & Jenny Thompson from DDSC who had experience organizing similar events in Victoria with the Rockettes. Sarah and Jenny’s take-home messages from those events was the importance of having as close to a full female crew as possible, getting the ladies to actually do as much as possible and to make it FUN! We gratefully accepted all assistance and advice offered by these wonderful women ! The Rockettes also provided give-away items such as key-chains and stickers which were included in gift-bags for each participant.
Warwick Gliding Club was extremely fortunate that DDSC made a commitment to provide their aircraft AND provide female crew (Jo Davis, Jenny Thompson and Sarah Thompson) and their support crew Richard Hosking. As it turned out, DDSC shut their own operations on the weekend so they could support the event! The Warwick Gliding Club also cross-hired a beautiful K-13 from one of the members, so there was a total of three 2-seaters (PW6, ASK-21 and K-13) and 2 tugs available. The K-13 proved to be very popular on the weekend – possibly due to the salesmanship of the instructor flying it, or maybe the pretty paintwork?
At two weeks out the event was fully booked for both days with unfortunately having to turn some ladies away. A high number of women were from the local area (13 out of 25) due to local promotion via Facebook Classifieds, the local council’s tourism officer, local school’s newsletter and word of mouth. Others came from Brisbane, Gold Coast and northern NSW.
Weather mid-winter in Warwick can be cold and windy – and it was! There was frost everywhere on Saturday morning when the first group of 11 ladies met in the clubhouse for a warming cuppa before an informative chat about how the day would run. We started flying just after 10am and managed to get a single flight for 9 ladies before the wind exceeded safe limits to continue. While waiting and hoping that the wind would drop everyone retired to the warmth of the clubhouse for morning tea and lunch which was provided by the club. We had a short Q&A session with the female pilots attending – asking things such as “What got you into gliding in the first place?” and “Tell us about your most memorable flight”. Unfortunately the wind did not abate enough to fly, so flying was cancelled for the rest of the day with those ladies who missed out on flying having the option to return early Sunday morning or book another day.
So early Sunday morning, two ladies who had missed out on flights the previous day braved the wintery conditions again and were treated to their flights. Spare a thought for the members who had the gliders & tugs DI’d and at the launch point for the first flight at 8am! With the concern that the wind may ruin another day, a concerted effort was made to get every participant into the air. There were members helping in so many ways – from taking the excellent photos you see here, to re-fueling the tugs. But importantly, the ladies themselves were involved (under supervision) – pushing gliders back, retrieving the tow-rope and running wings.
The end result was that every participant had their two flights by 1pm and could retire to the clubhouse. That meant the DDSC ASK-21 & tug was able to do the ferry flight home straight after lunch and get home in good time. Providing morning tea and lunch (prepared by wonderful volunteers) encouraged the ladies to socialize and chat at the end of the experience, too. There was plenty of smiles all round – and not just the participants. One of the nicest parts of the whole event was the way so many people contributed and we couldn’t have done it without them. Special mention to the support from DDSC!
It is now several weeks since the event and club members are still talking about how great it was to pull together a positive event and we have gained 2 new female members with potential for more as well! Gotta be happy with that!
The event was so successful in raising awareness in gliding and encouraging women’s participation that the club is considering holding another event in the future.
