IT’S A lighthearted atmosphere at the Ibis Hotel’s function room in which a group of local women make star shapes out of ribbon.
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The Mount Isa Zonta Club is making 10,000 of these stars to protest against violence through the international One Million Stars project.
“Only three thousand more stars to go,” one of the Zonta Club members laughs on Thursday evening as she puts a star on the pile accumulating on the table.
Not long after this she says to the ladies at the next table; “we’ve already made 1000 stars over here.”
And when the women at the other table make positive remarks indicating how impressed they are, she confesses her lie with a good humoured; “did you see my nose grow yet?”
They made 202 stars that evening, according to the project’s local coordinator Cathy Warren.
She hoped to have had twice the number of stars made when rallying the community for support to attend the event.
“There were two people that came who weren’t somehow in Zonta or doing it for a friend in Zonta,” Ms Warren said.
“We were obviously hoping for more, if we got enough people there we might be able to get 400 in the night, but 202 is good for the amount of people there.”
The project is a peaceful way of protesting violence. The stars made in countries across the world are to be part of an art display featured at the 2018 Commonwealth Games in the Gold Coast. The Mount Isa Zonta Club needs to send their 10,000 star away in early July.
The evening at the Ibis Hotel was a way of rallying the community together to make the stars; men, women and children welcomed.
The women sit there with glasses of wine and make their stars, but their conversations with each other turn to work issues, the best places for coffee, and weight and exercise.
I’m the token male in the room being shown how to make my second star when one of the women remarks “he probably wants to talk about motorbikes or something.”
When I mention this supportive network to Ms Warren and ask if it’s a Zonta mentality, she says; “I think a lot of it is Mount Isa people in general.
“Zonta is about empowering women and girls locally, nationally and internationally. But I think when we get a group of like minded people who are community minded and want to help out, it’s a light and fun atmosphere.”
The Zonta Club holds a community weave at the Mount Isa City Library on Saturdays from 9am to noon. All are welcomed and taught how to make the stars. Last Saturday there were 100 stars made at the community weave.
