In July, we shared
many tributes
to Betty Loughhead Turland, President of Soroptimist International 1983-5.
One photograph sent in showed Betty in the 1970s or early 1980s, sitting in a radio
studio.  Soon afterwards, Past
International President Margaret Lobo provided an explanation…the amazing story of how Soroptimists took advantage of cutting edge 1970s
communication technology!  Betty and her
colleagues in New Zealand were using “PEACESAT”, the first educational satellite
network in the world, to “meet” with Soroptimists from Australia, Fiji, Guam
and Hawaii.

In this week’s
SoroptiVoice blog, Past International President Margaret Lobo (SI Perth, Australia) explains how
Soroptimists used the PEACESAT to share news in a pre-internet era.

The Peace Satellite was launched in the 70’s for
communication and Betty Loughhead Turland, through her New Zealand contacts,
managed to secure a one hour spot for Soroptimists to communicate. The
satellite could be used from Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Guam, Hawaii and as
far as California (though members from mainland America did not participate).

The reception in the early days was not very good. In the
early 80’s the "weather bubble" was launched (another satellite) and
communication was better so this was used for our ‘PEACESAT’ meetings. Betty Hudson,
a retired journalist from SI Perth (Australia) and mother of current SISWP
President Carolyn Hudson, chaired the meetings from our local University. Members in New Zealand and Fiji went to their local radio
stations. I’m not sure from where members in Guam and Hawaii connected.

Delores Caboche, a member of SI Perth who
was SISWP Federation President during the early 80’s and later International Treasurer, tells me she joined the communication from Fiji
where she was visiting on her way back from the International Board Meeting in
1985 and took the opportunity to report on the meeting on ‘PEACESAT’. It
seems Betty Hudson was not too pleased with her as she had taken up most of the
one hour!!

These meetings, which happened about 3-4 times a year when
the satellite was in our area, gave members the opportunity to share their
project stories and also receive an update on the Quadrennial Projects which
were The Caribbean and Fiji projects and later the Senegal Clean Water Project.
Betty Hudson who edited our Regional Magazine usually wrote a summary of the
discussions on PEACESAT which were very interesting.

The photograph of Betty with two other Soroptimists with
a microphone in front of them (above) was taken during a PEACESAT meeting. The
Member sitting on Betty’s left is Sylvia Spear another well known NZ
Soroptimist who died a few years ago. I remember that it appeared in one of our
magazines.

It is very interesting how hungry we were for information
as it came snail mail and was often old news depending on where you lived.
Anyone who had travelled to an event brought back information before the
written report arrived. Perth Club was lucky as we had Delores who travelled a
lot, met Soroptimists and was very good at reporting in detail what had
happened. Betty L-T included a lot of information in her Newsletters that came
with the International Magazine called SPAN (Soroptimist Project/Programme
Action News). These days the WEB has made it so easy to access news and keep up
with projects, meetings, etc.

If you have more memories of PEACESAT meetings, or other ideas for Soroptimist initiatives that you’d like to see featured on the SoroptiVoice blog, post them to SI’s Facebook page or email rosi.jack(a)soroptimistinternational.org. 

“PEACESAT” – the Pan-Pacific
Education and Communication Experiments by Satellite – aimed to help facilitate
development and public service communications in the Pacific Islands region. It
linked the University of Hawaii, Maui Community College, Wellington Polytechnic
and the University of the South Pacific. Although the technology has changed,
the programme is still active: read more at http://www.peacesat.hawaii.edu.