Association of Moremi Women
New President Remarks by Mrs. Alice Olagunju
January 2008
Dear Moremi Sisters,
Happy New Year. To the Moslems among us; I say
Asalamu Alaikum. To the Christians; I say God is good
all the time. To the Traditionalist; I say aboru boye ,
aboye bose. I pray that the Lord Almighty, Aseda aiye
will make this year, a year of success and prosperity
for every one of us and our entire family members, Amen.
It is a new day, and I want to welcome you all to a new
beginning of year 2008. It is really a blessing to have
witness the end of an era. I pray for God’s guidance and
good health as we all work together this year to take
this Association of Moremi Women to the next great
level.
As one Philosopher once said, “We are twice armed if
we fight with faith.” I believe that in unity, we can
move a mountain. Our theme for this New Year is “STRESS
FREE”. This is the year that we all need to sit back,
relax, and get all our worries out of our mind. The time
has come when we need to take good care of ourselves and
our loved ones. We need to remember the incidents this
past year. Reflect over it, and use it as a tool to put
our stress level in check. I pray that God will continue
to give us the strength to be able to handle all the
stressful situations in our lives, Amen.
Year 2007 has being a tragedy and challenging year
for our Nigerian Community in Southern California in
terms of loosing close friends, and some other
circumstances which are far greater beyond our control.
As the Lord will have it, and as a Christian soldiers,
we were able to keep hope alive and continue to march
forward. I must say that it is not easy to plan and
execute a big party but we did it. We were able to put
together the celebration of our 10TH year anniversary of
our great Association “Honoring a decade of service”. At
the beginning of it all, it looks like nothing will ever
happen but with some great efforts and persistence of
our sisters, we were able to demonstrate that there is
strength in unity. I thank you all for a job well done.
Duty called and I answered. I thank you all for
electing me as your new President. I will like to say; I
accept the position of the Presidency of Association of
Moremi Women, to provide good leadership to carry on the
good work of our previous president. I thank you for
your trust in me to take us to the next level as we all
work together to get there.
I congratulate my fellow Executive members: Vice
President; Dr. Sade Kannike-Martins, Secretary; Chief (Mrs)
Fama Adewale Shomadhi, Assistant Secretary; Chief (Mrs)
Nike Amudipe, PRO; Mrs. Tayo Abon, Assistant PRO; Mrs.
Patricia Amodu-Oseni, Social Secretary; Mrs. Taiwo Fanu,
Assistant Social Secretary; Mrs. Toun Famutimi,
Treasurer; Mrs. Toyin Ademuyiwa, Financial Secretary;
Mrs. Dupe Atanda, and Provost; Mrs. Toyin Oshinuga.
We will continue to update our website,
www.moremiwomen.org. We will also bring the calendar
of events back to the table whereby we will be able
to plan some events ahead of time with some training
sessions. We will continue with our health awareness
sessions, as we strive to live a healthy and long
life.
As we have been discussing from many months on
how to get many more Yoruba women involved in our
Association and our dream of owning a cultural or
recreation center; the time is now. We need to get
back to what made us the envies of many women group
in Southern California.
Membership Recruitment: Membership recruitment
starts with me and you. Our membership is dwindling
due to many factors that we are aware of and we
struggled to fix. The old English saying is that a
tree does not make a forest. Another one is there is
power in numbers. The old Yoruba saying is “Agbajo
owo la nfi nso aya”. “Ajeji owo kan ko gbe eru de
ori.” In short; we have a big venture in front of us
and we need all the help we can get from our
community. We need to reach out and bring more
Yoruba women back to the Association. We don’t need
to be over taxing our fewer members for something
that will benefit all the Yoruba women and
especially the Nigerian Community in Southern
California.
How do we go about the membership recruitment
depend on us. I will like to propose that every
member make a resolution to bring at lease two (2)
new or old members back into the Association before
the end of the year 2008. I know it is going to be a
tough sell, but we can do it.
I will be discussing further with our executive
members on how to approach the recruitment efforts
without compromising our AMW objectives. One of the
areas we the Association need to discuss is granting
furlough for past due membership fees to old members
who wish to rejoin us without necessarily appearing
punitive. How much furlough to grant depends on our
collective decision, and we need to make it sooner
than later.
Some members suggested that we should encourage
our former members who have been gone for so long to
just come back and complete a new application
without demanding for old dues. If that is what we
want, we should encourage them to do so with our
collective understanding that we all agree.
Our new membership application fees could be
reduced one time only for newer applicant. How much
of reduction depends on us.
We should have a membership drive day on our
calendar. Where our PRO, Secretary, and Social
Secretary will put a program together and invites as
many as possible Yoruba women in Southern
California.
Association Cultural Center: We are lucky this
year that our new Vice-President (Dr. Kannike-Martins)
knows something about real estate. The Executives
and a search committee will be developing a workable
plan on how to buy and secure AMW Center. This plan
should be flexible enough to guarantee input from
every financial member. This is the time to act. We
need to get back to what made us special in the
first place. The prices of properties are falling in
Southern California. Our Vice President and I will
be meeting soon to recommend search committee
members name to the house for your approval.
Conclusion: We need a renew energy to move
forward. Our community is looking for our leadership
and fanfare. We are growing older, our children are
getting married, and we are becoming grandmothers in
every corner. We need to mobilize our self a little
further and show the community that, where we came
from (Yoruba Land), is still the best cultural and
family driven center of the world.
Food for thought: I will like to leave this with
you “The ultimate measure of a man or woman is not
where he/she stands in the moment of comfort and
convenience, but where he/she stands at the time of
challenge and controversy.” Yes we can keep the fire
burning.
Thank you all and God’s blessings at all times.
Moremi agbe wa o, Ase.
Mrs. Alice M. Olagunju President- 2008 & 2009
