Moira Dynon was a passionate believer in the power of Loreto students from all around Australia to live out Mother Gonzaga Barry’s view that, “would it not be a good thing for all Loreto girls to federate, in a great league for a noble end…” Her commitment and her experience as a woman of action for social justice, led to the establishment of the first Loreto Federation, a movement that continues to this day.

Moria Shelton graduated from Loreto Mandeville Hall Toorak in 1936 and went on to study Science at the University of Melbourne. In 1942 she was commissioned in the Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force and took on responsibility for the inspection of RAAF munitions around Australia during the war, often the only female officer training or inspecting all male units. Following the war Moira became a research officer in the area of antibiotics with the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories in Victoria and was appointed as the female officer on the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. In 1950 Moira married John Francis Dynon; they made their home in Malvern and raised five children together.

Moira worked to establish Loreto Federation, the biennial gathering of Loreto educated past students from around Australia, which held its first conference in Melbourne in 1955. She was the foundation Federation President in 1954-55 and President of the Loreto Toorak PPA from 1956-57. Her Loreto education motivated her to use her gifts for the greater and common good.

Moira was active in a number of other Catholic women’s organisations throughout the 1950s-60s and with their support instigated a series of impactful international aid projects. In 1952 the Dynons established the Malvern branch of the United Nations Australia Association. In 1960 she initiated and ran an appeal to provide secondary education for Japanese children of returned Australian servicemen, with international and Japanese welfare agencies, raising $150,000 for this cause. From 1964-67 Moira was chair of Aid for India and in this role and through its successor Aid India she oversaw the donation of tens of thousands of tins and pints of milk, sent to India. She assisted famine relief campaigns in Bengal, Bangladesh and Pakistan as well as supporting the welfare of unemployed Italian migrants through her presidency of the Italo-Australian Welfare Association.

Moira was committed to her Catholic faith and to ecumenism; she drew upon her Christian beliefs on her work as a humanitarian, both internationally and in her local community. Moira died on 23 October 1976.