Calendar 3 2011 - Member profile Wattle Day Association
While much of CAL monies go directly to creators and publishers, often payments have a flow-on effect in the community, through a number of non-profit organisations that are CAL members. ‘It’s always great to see money heading their way particularly when we hear about some of the marvellous things they’ve been able to do with their CAL payments,’ says CAL’s Director of Member Services, Eloise Nolan.
The Wattle Day Association is a relatively new CAL member, signing up in July 2008. The Association is a non-profit organisation that organises Wattle Day on 1 September every year. Run by a committee of volunteers, it also exists to promote the wattle as Australia’s national floral emblem and unifying symbol for all Australians.
The Association’s website (
www.wattleday.asn.au) provides a number of useful facts about wattles, how to grow them and what the flower means for Australia and Australians. The usage data provided to CAL from surveys of schools shows that the content on its website is also a useful resource for schools.
Wattle Day has been celebrated in various forms in Australia since 1910. According to the Wattle Day Association, Wattle Day activities in the past have included ‘planting of wattle trees in school grounds, school lessons on botany, street decorations of wattle blossom, and wearing of sprigs of wattle, often sold for charity’.
Since joining CAL, the Association has been collecting CAL payments, which it has invested back into its website, focusing on building it as a resource and a point of engagement. This investment enabled the Association to reach out to more people via their website and then led to them being able to apply for a volunteer grant to purchase two badge-making machines.
Making badges meant that the Association could form an alliance with the Volunteer Bushfire Brigades Association, part of the ACT Rural Fire Service, in 2010 – giving them a means to engage with the community at large and linking Wattle Day with the bushfire awareness sessions that the service holds in the community throughout spring.
Through the sale of badges on Wattle Day, the Association raised over $6,000 for the rural fire service in 2010 and over $7,000 in 2011.
Terry Fewtrell, president of the Wattle Day Association, says that ‘the CAL payment to the Association has been a great enabler. It has allowed us to make significant advances towards our objectives of promoting Wattle and National Wattle Day. In doing so it has also enabled the building of significant social capital through our volunteer activities and the funds raised for the volunteer ACT Bushfire Brigades Association. I see this as a wonderful example of using the copyright mechanism to build a better Australia.’
Photo: On behalf of the ACT Rural Fire Service, Kate Betts receives a helmet-full of Wattle Day badges from Wattle Day Association President, Terry Fewtrell.
Photography by Suzette Searle