THE HISTORY OF THE WOMEN'S INSTITUTE

This information is taken from the Official WI website (http://www.thewi.org.uk/)

The Women’s Institute was formed in 1915 with two clear aims: to revitalise rural communities and to encourage women to become more involved in producing food during the First World War. Since then our aims have broadened and we are now the largest women’s organisation in the UK. We celebrated our 90th anniversary in 2005 and currently have 205,000 members in 6,800 WIs.

We play a unique role in providing women with educational opportunities and the chance to build new skills, to take part in a wide variety of activities and to campaign on issues that matter to them and their communities.

The National Structure

The national headquarters of the WI, the National Federation of Women's Institutes, is in London. We also have an office in Cardiff, NFWI-Wales, and a residential college in Oxfordshire, Denman College. We produce a membership magazine WI Life. WI Enterprises is the trading arm of the organisation and exists to raise funds and provide benefits for members. Companies wishing to explore sponsorship should visit the commercial opportunities section.

The Regional Structure

Our 6,800 WIs are grouped together to form 70 county and island federations, each with a regional office. Details of federation offices can be found in the 'Find a WI' section. Together the WIs and federations make up the National Federation. Each level of the organisation is run by a committee of elected members. The NFWI Board of Trustees is democratically elected every two years by the members.

Separate organisations exist in Scotland and Northern Ireland. In Scotland, the Scottish Rural Women’s Institute has 25,000 members and its headquarters is in Edinburgh. The Federation of Women’s Institutes of Northern Ireland has 7,000 members and is based in Belfast. The WI has close international links through affiliation to the Associated Country Women of the World (ACWW), and through this has links with several million women in 70 countries.

Funding

The majority of our income comes from annual membership subscriptions, supported by funds raised by our trading arm, WI Enterprises. Other sources of revenue include grant-making bodies, educational trusts, commercial sponsors and investments.