VPRS 17605 Miss Teenage Quest Presentation Night Programmes

Full description

The 3AW Community Services Trust was formed on 16 November 1950, dedicated to raising funds for the Women's (later Royal) Women's Hospital. In the early post-war years the hospital was run down and desperately overcrowded as the baby boom and European migration swelled the population. Radio station 3AW adopted the hospital's building fund and the Trust was formed to manage its fund raising efforts.

Together for many years with the Sun newspaper, the Trust's major source of money were the appeals focused on the (Sun) Miss Teenage Quest and the award of Miss Teenage Queen for which young female contestants competed for the most money they could raise for the charity. Extremely generous prizes provided by sponsors were offered to winners and the Sun routinely published photographs and articles about the appeal and its young entrants. In the later years of the hospital's association with the Trust other awards such as 3AW Baby of Victoria Quest, Family of Victoria Quest and Ms Melbourne Quest encouraged a wider range of participants. The quests' final year was 1994.

The enormous building appeal run by the hospital from the late 1940s and for which the quests were the major donor was finally realised in the 3AW Community Services Block, a 12 storey building in Grattan Street Carlton, opened in 1969 and the hospital's home until 2008. Millions of pounds and later dollars were raised for the hospital in its 44 years of operation.

The programs - booklets of several pages - for the grand and formal presentation nights found in VPRS 17605 provide details of the Trust's administration, the entrants, their activities, sponsors, the money raised, and it's applications in the hospital, well-illustrated with photographs of the contestants.