President’s Message

PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE FOR WEBSITE:  NOVEMBER 2012

Hello, I thought you might like an update of the Club year so far as we are about half way through.

So what have we been up to?  We have continued our support of Ipswich Lighthouse with a collection of toiletry bags for the refuges in September with our next collection due at our AGM in April 2103.  Some of us attended the grand opening of their new Resource Centre in October.  But, the ‘icing on the cake’ for us for our relationship with Lighthouse was that the Club won an award from the Federation (Soroptimist International of Great Britain & Ireland) at its 78^th Federation Conference in Belfast on 27^th October for its work and involvement with the production of ‘Every Six Seconds’ (the book describing personal experiences of domestic violence by women from Lighthouse). The award came under the area of ‘Violence and Conflict Resolution’ and was selected from over 300 projects.

In August we held a coffee and cookie morning to raise money for the WaterAid Big Dig for Malawi (which was match funded by the Government) and our Regional project in South Africa to help train a nurse (to nurse AIDS patients).

We were absolutely delighted when Zoe Newson won her bronze medal at the Paralympics and are looking forward to getting our hands on it when joins us at our meeting on 28^th November to tell us all about her experience and her plans for the future.

The ‘Make a Change’ project team updated us on the project at our 14^th November meeting, when the Mayor of Ipswich also joined us.

We are working towards setting up an educational bursary to assist women from Lighthouse and Make a Change to make that important step in their lives to educate, empower and enable them to move on in their lives (again keep a watch out for information and updates).

Some of us will be involved in the White Ribbon street event in Woodbridge on 1^st December.  This year we will be highlighting Abuse in Teenage Relationships, which fits in with our focus on Education and will be an opportunity to distribute our splendid ‘Loves me … Loves me not’ bookmarks.

We are working on the ‘Women’s Question Time’ evening in March 2013 to celebrate International Women’s Day (date and details yet to be finalised and confirmed).  We aim to invite local top women to let us have their views on all sorts of topics and we will be inviting local groups to join us.  This will be a must for your diary.

We continue to work hard and enjoy ourselves and look forward to seeing you at a meeting or event.  You never know you might like to join us.

With my very good wishes,

Joyce