Introduction to our projects by Programme Director, Lindsay Green
Soroptimist International Great Britain and Ireland (SIGBI) is one of five Federations of Soroptimist International.
We all work to help improve the lives of women and girls worldwide, using our networks to deliver projects relevant in our own localities and universally. Many of the problems facing women and girls are the same everywhere, for example gender inequality, but there are particular problems in each continent, country, region and locality.
Our special status at the UN helps us to engage with UN entities as well as soroptimists worldwide.
Our current focus is helping to implement projects which work toward achievement of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs – https://sdgs.un.org/goals). We do this through our own projects and working in partnership with others at home and abroad.
Our projects range from supporting local charities (e.g. women’s refuges) to those at country and international levels through our Federation’s countries and with the other Federations and their clubs.
SI Wexford, as part of the National Project “Safe Home, Safe Community”, had 15,000 “Loves Me, Loves me Not” bookmarks printed for distribution to every Club in the country for onward distribution within their respective communities.
These bookmarks have been very well received by all our Clubs. Within the Wexford community we have distributed them to schools, libraries, surgeries , shops to name but a few places.
SI St. Vincent designed a Self Breast Examination pamphlet after consulting the SVG Medical Association.
The pamphlet was sent to Clinics throughout the island and also shared with the SVG Medical Association and the Caribbean Medical Imaging Centre.
SI Colombo, Sri Lanka, provided free sanitary napkins to schools.
This reduces the amount of school missed by young girls during their periods as it prevents embarrassment that they cannot afford sanitary protection.
In the UK we have a UK Programme Action Committee (UKPAC) to which all UK Regions and Clubs belong. They work on projects specifically based in the UK, such as our Women in Prisons project in conjunction with The Prison Reform Trust. More recently, UKPAC has been working on improving legal protection for survivors of domestic abuse within the Domestic Abuse Bill.
We call our activities Programme Action (PA) and they are grouped into the UN’s 5Ps. Each of our Assistant Programme Directors focuses on one of these areas, and you can read more about the work being done by Soroptimists under each P by following the links below:
We work through Education, Empowerment and Enablement (3Es) supported by Awareness (raising), Advocacy and Action (3As).