Projects

Each club identifies the needs of its community, then establishes specific projects to address these needs. All SI projects relate to one or more of the six Programme Focus Areas: Economic and Social Development, Education, Environment, Health, Human Rights and the Status of Women, and International Goodwill and Understanding. The projects listed below include some of the local and international issues we research and support in SI Gosport, Fareham and District:

Women’s Refuge
We support the local Women’s Refuges, including collecting toiletries for new arrivals and arranging a summer outing for the families to a local country park. Several members are on the Fareham and Gosport Family Aid (FGFA) Management Committee. This has been an on-going project for a number of years, but in 2003 we gave them £5,000 towards providing an all-weather play area for the children.

Contact the Elderly
A tea party for the local (Fareham and Southampton) Contact the Elderly groups is held each summer, usually at Hill Head. One club member is the local organiser for the Fareham and Gosport group: if anyone would like to know more or help as a driver once a month or act as an hostess once a year then please make contact through this site.

Lean Lunch for SI Quadrennial Project
The next  Lean Lunch will be held at Whiteley Community Centre on March 17, 2012. We held the first Lean Lunch event in 2004 as a joint venture with other local Soroptimist clubs and raised £300. Successive events were held in support of Project Independence at the same venue, but run by SI Southampton and SI Chichester. 
The event was again organised by SI Gosport and Fareham in 2008 and by SI Winchester in 2011 when the speaker, Fergus Lyons, gave a good talk on the history of WOW (Wonders of Waste) bags, made in the Philippines from discarded juice containers.

The four clubs had tables selling their wares and Gosport and Fareham members ran a book stall that raised £28. This money has been spent on producing a bookmark raising awareness of domestic abuse and was distributed at a Bay House, Gosport.

Other fund-raising
We hold other fund-raising events such as a coffee morning, a BBQ lunch and quiz night . A patchwork quilt made by around a dozen club members was raffled at our Federation Conference in Brighton and raised about £600.

President’s charity
We support the President’s chosen charity, which in 2008-09 was the Hampshire Air Ambulance.  In the club year 2009-10 our President chose the Alzheimers Society, in addition to supporting the SI quadrennial appeal, Project SIerra. Our immediate past president (2010-11) has picked Macmillan Cancer Support, as well as Project SIerra. The current president has chosen to continue support for the Alzheimers Society and other local charities including Girl Guides, Haslar Radio and the Cystic Fibrosis Trust.

Regional projects
The club makes a valuable contribution to the regional efforts on such projects as conducting a rail safety survey, lobbying for landmine action and collating statistics on the number of volunteer hours done by our members. Potential additional fund-raising will be needed to support one house for 11 children in Mamelodi village for orphaned and abused children in our regional Friendship Link of SI South Africa – other regional projects are also being considered, which we would play our part in supporting.

Lobbying
We also support other lobbying actions, from Fairtrade week to Breakthrough Breast Cancer.