Association Sister’s Aid (Zusterhulp)
The term ‘women’s aid’ may have been invented in the 1970s, but many years earlier individual women and women’s organizations had already been active in this area.
An initiative in this field from the beginning of the twentieth century, is the Vereniging Zusterhulp (Association Sister’s Aid). The founders, J. van Riemsdijk-van der Leeuw and H.W. Spiering, aimed to give material and mental aid to women and girls, regardless of their social position or religious conviction.
To achieve this goal, the association ran a rest home called Moria, two sanitaria, ‘Erica’ and ‘de Kraaienhorst’ in Nunspeet and residence ‘Eigen Haard’ (Own Hearth) in Amsterdam. In 1979, the association was turned into the Johanna van Riemsdijk Foundation.
The archive, now open to the public at Atria, contains items from the whole period 1902-1979, among which many beautiful images of the rest homes.
Source: Archive Vereniging ‘Zusterhulp’ inv.nr 10
