Youth worker and recent Pride Award winner Deidre Cline, has stepped up to the role of Leeds community fundraiser and administrator for WIZO UK.
With an aim of creating new fundraising initiatives and strengthening activities in the area, WIZO UK has created a new position of a full-time Leeds community fundraiser and administrator.
The Leader of Youth Award winner, Dee, as she likes to be known, has been a careers advisor and a generic counsellor for the young people. She is also an Explorer Scout leader, a volunteer counsellor and a co-ordinator for the local Race for Life events.
“At times in our lives we all need someone to talk to and sometimes that can be difficult, so I intend to engage with young people and listen to them,” says Dee.
In line with WIZO’s strategy to engage with the next generation Dee aims to increase awareness across the community of the vital social welfare work carried out in Israel by World WIZO and develop informal educational programmes directed towards younger members of the community.
“I’m really excited about this role,” says Dee who wants to break down a stereotypical image that people have of WIZO, with many feeling that its job is mainly to stage coffee mornings and principally aimed at a certain age group. “It’s time for a renaissance.”
This matches Dee’s involvement with her experience working with youth over the years. “One of my ideas relates to what I used to do when I was a kid, and that was hooking-up with a pen-friend in another country.”
Dee wants to twin Bar/Bat Mitzvahs with a person of a similar age but twelve months prior to their celebration.
She recalls the Judean Club where Dee was a volunteer helping out at summer schemes and discovering “I could always empathise with young people and had the ability to talk to them rather than at them.”
“WIZO’s role in the 21st century as the main agent for change for women, children and the youth in Israel, is vital and has been for many decades. What is brand new is that we are actually going to engage with Leeds youth, mainly through The Zone. “If we don’t connect with the youth, then we will not have a WIZO in the future,” she warns.
