Welcome to our website

Hello and welcome to the website of our club, Soroptimist International of Chelmsford.

If you are just visiting, we hope you will browse the site and find it of interest.

So who exactly are Soroptimists?

Well, Soroptimist International is the world’s largest women’s service organisation with Consultative Status at the United Nations. For a more detailed description of our organisation we would suggest you visit our page Who Are We?

We work locally: the Chelmsford club was founded in 1951 and has given over 60 years of service, locally to our community – working with, amongst others, Chelmsford Women’s Aid (Refuge). We lobby and undertake local projects that benefit women and girls.

We also work regionally – with nine other clubs in the London Anglia Regionto support The Hillcrest Aids Centre Trust in South Africa. The clubs in the Region will fund-raise to pay for training for two women as registered nurses. The training takes two years and is taking place at the Chatsmed Candlelight Nursing School in the Durban area. Training fees, registration, books, examination fees, for year one come to R18,764.40 and the fees for year two are R17,000.

Margaret Turnbull of SI Enfield and District leads this project, which has been adopted by all ten clubs within London Anglia Region, who will each contribute funds for the next two years.

The Regional website contains more information on this project.

We work nationally – where we support the UK Programme Action Committee’s Stop Violent Against Women, project (see What We Do to see our event in High Chelmer shopping precinct.

And we work internationally, fund-raising for our 3Es Healthcare project, which aims to train women as midwives in The Gambia.

For more information on how it all fits together please visit Our Structure page.

Our club

We are a lively and very friendly group of women who meet on the fourth Thursday of the month in the Council Chamber of Springfield Parish Centre, Chelmsford. Every other month we meet up socially. This could take the form of a meal in a restaurant, a concert or a visit to the theatre and each summer we hold a garden party.

Do have a look around this website where you will find information on the projects that we are working on at the moment.

If you would like more information on our club and work, do email us – we’d love to hear from you: info@chelmsfordsoroptimists.com