President’s message
President Carys’ address April 2012
Recycled materials can reappear in many different forms. Well here I am, 6 years down the road, being recycled but hopefully, with more experience than I had before at being both a Soroptimist and a President. To begin with I want to thank everyone for embracing the change in the organisation of club and its programme for this year. Particular thanks to Cathie, Jean R and Christina for heading your groups and for keeping in contact with progress on the programme even when I was enjoying being half way around the world. When you see the programme I hope you’ll be pleased as I am and be able to look forward to the year ahead where I hope everyone will have the opportunity to participate.
Perhaps ‘Embracing change and moving on’ should be our theme this year. I hope changes we make are built on past experiences, our own and that of other clubs and that they are made to try and improve the way we do things. I don’t believe in change for change’s sake.
My experiences as Regional President and my going to my first International Conference have given me a much better understanding of the whole of SI and the Regional, Federal and Global picture.
Although we have a variety of speakers and times to relax and enjoy ourselves in the programme, we will try to focus more on Programme Action at the first meeting of each month. The latest Programme Action goals are printed on the back of your programme and we will be looking at what we do and how we can best divide our energies and support to women and girls locally, regionally, at Federation and International levels. It really is what being a Soroptimist is all about.
Being a Soroptimist is also about Friendship – very much so. This has been shown very strongly to me over the past few year and I know many of you have experienced this too. It was certainly strong in our new Friendship club SI Moreton North near Brisbane. I met with them as a group twice and at other times with individual members. I met some wonderful, really interesting women but the person who left a lasting impression of my admiration for her was Eve, a native of the Gubbi Gubbi tribe. She had to overcome so many hardships and prejudices when she was younger and now she is a Professor, a Linguist and Anthropologist; such a lovely, interesting person. Imagine my surprise and delight at the Women’s Day supper when Eve said she knew the Welsh National Anthem and then sang it all for us with English words but a very strong voice! Naturally I followed with the Welsh words and I’m sure that if I had stayed longer she would have learnt those too!
Finally, I hope that we will continue our quest for new members and support our latest members as they learn and become involved in our organisation. We have lots to do this year, our 65th as a club, as well as it being a Jubilee and Olympics year.
Exciting times ahead I hope!
Thank you everyone.
Carys