Meru Womens Garden Project Archives - SI Harrogate and District

Club Celebrates reaching it’s target to raise £3000 for Meru Women’s Garden Project

5 years ago in

Meru Women's Garden Project

Club members Celebrated reaching our target and more by raising £3500 for the Meru Women’s Garden Project in Kenya. This is equivalent to providing the resources to establishing twelve gardens.We were delighted to welcome three prospective members and enjoyed an excellent supper meeting at the White Hart Hotel on 6th February. The Club’s three year project to support our Federation project included raising funds and awareness in many different ways to support women and their families in Meru Kenya .The ladies in Meru have developed sustainable market gardens producing food for their own families and extra produce to raise family income. The project has also introduced education programmes for girls and boys with the aim of stopping Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), still widely practiced in this part of Kenya though illegal. The picture shows Soroptimist Penny Broadley, Joint President Hilary Waddington, Soroptimist Val Hills and

Meru Supper evening raises over £420 for the Meru Women’s Garden Project

6 years ago in

Meru Women's Garden Project

Harrogate & District Soroptimists raised a further £421.25 at their latest Meru Women’s Garden Project fundraising evening supporting women and children in Kenya to start their own market gardens, thereby empowering the women to feed their families, create security and aid financial independence . In total Harrogate and District Soroptimists have now raised over £3000 since they started the project at the Autumn Flower Show in 2016 when they gained a Silver medal for their innovative garden. Club Members and guests alongside Yorkshire Regional President Chris Clark and Yorkshire Regional President Elect Pat Kilbane enjoyed a wonderful summers evening at the Hub in Knaresborough. Belebele an African Drumming and Singing group really set the mood before an excellent African supper after which Di Flemming and Jen Berry had everyone on their feet singing a couple of Kenyan songs ably translated by Eunice Kwallah a guest

Hand made quilt raffle raises £700 for Meru Women Project

6 years ago in

Child.org

Harrogate & District Soroptimists have raised over £700 towards the Meru Women’s Garden Project in Kenya, from a raffle of three magnificent hand made patchwork quilts. The Club is now well on target to raise the £3000 by the end 2018 to enable, empower and educate women and girls in Meru, Kenya. The Meru Women’s Garden project is a 3 year Soroptimist International of Great Britain and Ireland (SIGBI) project, launched on International Women’s Day on the 8 March 2016 in partnership with Child.org. The project aims to develop the well being and status of women living in Meru by helping them to develop the land (garden) around their houses, so that they can both feed themselves better and have additional vegetables, fruit and herbs to sell to provide an income. . This is combined with an education programme for girls to reduce the rate of

Club receives prestigious Mary Hillary Award for the Meru Show Garden

7 years ago in

HARROGATE & DISTRICT SOROPTIMISTS RECEIVE REGIONAL GOOD PRACTICE AWARD The Harrogate & District Soroptimist Club were delighted to receive the Mary Hillary Award for the Yorkshire Region. The award is the Soroptimist International Good Practice Award, which the Club received for their ongoing contribution to the Meru Women’s Garden Project and their innovative methods of raising awareness of Soroptimist projects at last year’s Harrogate Autumn Flower Show. Their Kenyan Garden told the story of how women and families in Meru are getting the opportunity to be educated, enabled and empowered to be self sufficient and earn money through the sale of their cash crops. This is possible through learning good agricultural practices, getting the tools they require and being given on going support. President Nicola said ‘It is a great honour to receive the Mary Hillary Award. A big thank you to all the

A chance to win a beautiful handmade and embellished art quilt to raise funds for Meru

7 years ago in

handmade quilt

Harrogate and District Soroptimists are raffling this beautiful handmade and embellished quilt (8’7″x 7’7″). It is hard to capture the beauty of this piece of work and the detail of the stitching and embellishment (see photos below) also in the raffle are two further quilts donated by the quilting group at Menwith Hil (5’7″x4’6″ & 4’7″x4′)l. All profits will go to the Meru Womens Garden Project that aims to enable, educate and empower women in Meru, Kenya – for more information visit SIGBI Meru Women The raffle will be held on the 13 December – for more information on how to purchase tickets email sihandd@hotmail.co.uk

Meru Day of Service – a washout but good cheer

7 years ago in

Alzheimer Society

Harrogate and District Soroptimists were keen to raise awareness of the Meru Women’s Garden Project and join in with our Federation Meru Day of Action. We secured the charity stall at the popular Ripon Market – held every Thursday and Saturday. There is high demand for the charity stall that Harrogate Borough Council offer. The stall was already booked up on the 15th July (the day of Action) so we opted for the Thursday 20th July. – Thor chose to make that a day to remember as the heavens opened and the rains came down. There was little respite from the rain, nevertheless we managed to sell some of the delicious Meru jams and pasta sauces along with raffle tickets for the amazing quilts that have been given to us. We also had a collection for the Alzheimer Society. We certainly promoted the Club as

Meru Garden for Life wins Silver Award – and raises enough money to support FIVE Meru Gardens

8 years ago in

Harrogate

Harrogate and District Soroptimists have had a very busy 3 days at the Harrogate Autumn Flower Show at the Great Yorkshire Show Ground. Over 37000 people visited the show and apart from heavy rain on the Friday morning the sun shone bright. Our Meru Garden recreated a little bit of Meru in Yorkshire. It tells the story of how the Meru Women’s Garden project supports women to develop the skills and knowledge to create a ‘garden’ that is productive and will give them an income as well as food to feed their families. We manned our garden throughout the 3 days. We met some fantastic people from all over the world including people from Kenya and those who used to live in Kenya. We were delighted to hear from them how authentic they thought the garden was. We waited with baited breath