Minnie May Gates
Minnie May Gates MBE aka Mrs Edmond Gates born Minnie May Forsyth was an Australian community worker who helped create the Big Sister Movement and who was the treasurer of the National Council of Women in New South Wales.
Life
Gates was born in 1878 in the Sydney suburb of Willoughby. Her parents were Stephana and Robert Forsyth and they had nine children.In 1928 she took an interest in helping women who were coming to Sydney and she formed a group within the NSW branch of the National Council of Women of Australia. By the 1930s the ambition grew to open a hostel for women in Bligh Street in what is now the Sydney central business district. The hostel was largely funded by the NSWNCW from their budget for employment-relief. The initiative consumed most of their available money that year. In 1934 the NSWNCW decided that they could no longer fund the hostel and Gates decided that she would undertake its management. This was the start of the Big Sister Movement.
In 1932 she was elected the President of the Council for Social and Moral Reform.
In 1941 she was made a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in recognition of her work with the Big Sister Movement and as treasurer of the New South Wales branch of the National Council of Women of Australia.
Gates served on the Royal North Shore Hospital's board throughout the 1940s and 1950s. She campaigned to improve the hospital's child care. She stood down in 1960, the year that the Minnie Gates Playground was opened in the grounds of the hospital.