We were delighted to welcome Conny Looi Osborne from our sister club, SI Bangsay, Malaysia who was over in the UK visiting relatives in Ipswich.  She is a great advocate for our organisation and very involved in the project work her Club has undertaken in the last couple of years.   In a six month period they ran a ‘bank’  to serve Malaysians who were in financial difficulties due to the  pandemic.  This involved both food and money supplied by their club members to the public who were in need.  They estimate they gave some respite to 2500 families.   Following a tropical depression which made landfall on 16 Dec 2021, bringing torrential rains throughout Peninsula Malaysia over 3 days help was needed to those affected by the floods in 8 states, involving some 125,000 people .At its height more than 71,000 victims were displaced. The most

Ipswich is a dispersal area for Refugees.  We are proud to support the Suffolk Refugee Centre https://suffolkrefugee.org.uk who do brilliant work with Refugees who come to settle in our area.    They provide: Quality independent advice and support Help with education, employment, access to immigration advice, housing, utilities, welfare benefits etc No matter what the problem, they aim to resolve it. Their workload has been massively increased by the issues in Afghanistan and the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. In the last 8 months our Club has provided 4 of Suffolk Refugee Support’s Clients with a small bursary to enable them to work in the UK.  All the recipients are professional women who have excellent qualifications and experience but needed to go on a profession specific online course to enable them to gain employment in our country.  Our Bursary Scheme has been running for 10