The Country Women's Association (CWA) Portland held their Annual International day celebrations with a special guest and a generous donation to the local schools.
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Annette Pearce travelled from Annandale to deliver a presentation on Latvia, where her parents escaped from during Russian occupation.
"This is the first time i've ever done something like this [presented] to a group of anybody," Ms Pearce said.
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"It's an honour to be here to talk about Latvia, the culture, food, heritage and how it has progressed since the occupation of Russia."
Ms Pearce engaged the attendees with facts about the Latvian song and dance festival, which sees a grand scale of participants.
"This year there were 41,000 participants at the festival and we celebrate that every five years," Ms Pearce said.
"So I put that up on the screen and let everybody see what happens over there."
Ms Pearce attended the occasion wearing her Mother's costume from her native region of Ludza.
"There's about 71 different regions of Latvia and they've all got their own costume," Ms Pearce said.
According to Ms Pearce, Latvian culture is rich with performance, even when the fesitval isn't running.
"In nearly every suburb, everybody sings and dances," Ms Pearce said.
There's about 1.2 million songs that everybody knows and 30,000 melodies that have been handed down the generations."
After Ms Pearce's presentations, an afternoon tea was held and Portland Central and St Joseph's School's were presented with cheques of $500 to go towards their end of year awards.
Principal of Portland Central School, Matthew Quirk said the assistance received from the CWA greatly benefits the students.
"We feel very privileged to get the money from the CWA every year towards our presentation day and other wellbeing initiatives,"
"We're incredibly grateful for their support."
Administration officer of St Joseph's, Nikki Field expressed gratitude on behalf of the school.
"We're always thankful for the donation that we use towards our end of year graduation awards," Ms Field said.
President of the Portland CWA branch, Pam Collis said it is an honour to be able to assist the local schools where possible.
"I think it's great to be able to help out the local community," Ms Collis said.
Ms Collis said the afternoon was a success for the branch.
"I am very pleased that so many people turned up. The speaker was excellent, I found it so interesting," Ms Pearce said.
"It was a beautiful occasion."