Four SI Presidents and a Baroness attended the House of Lords on 25 March 2011 at the 21^st anniversary dinner held jointly by SI Thames Valley and SI London Chiltern Region to celebrate the founding of SI Thames Valley. The evening was hosted by Baroness Shreela Flather on behalf of SI London Chilterns President Johanna Raffan and represented part of her FUN programme for 2010-11.

Four levels of our SI organisation were represented: International President Hanne Jensbo, SIGBI President Liz Morgan-Lewis, the President of London Chilterns Region, Johanna Raffan, along with President Peggy Simson of SI Thames Valley. Eighty-two guests were welcomed and invited to celebrate the occasion. The excellent dinner was preceded by a guided tour of the House of Lords. Members of SI Thames Valley were delighted to be able to meet up with friends from their Link clubs SI Weston super Mare and SI Val Brabant, who took advantage of the trip to spend the weekend in an unusually sunny London. SI Thames Valley member, Rose Moriba, spoke about the club’s Kori District Project in Sierra Leone and Professor Jane Maher brought news from the Lynda Jackson Centre, SI Chiltern Region’s current chosen charity.

At the end of the evening Soroptimists crowded onto the terrace and with much posing against the impressive background of the House of Lords recorded in photos what had been a truly memorable occasion.

With thanks to Kay Heppell SI Thames Valley

International Women’s Day 8th March
Soroptimists will be joining Women for Women International (WWI) again during the day on the 8th March for a march across the Millennium Bridge finishing in front of the National Theatre. There will also be an event in the evening. Soroptimists and WWI are also involved with an evening comedy event in London organised by Funny Women (who ran a workshop at the Brighton Conference).  More details to follow.

On July 19th 2011 a coach full of Bedford Soroptimists and their guests headed for London and in particular the House of Lords where they were met by Soroptimists guests from other clubs including our regional president, Johanna.

Our afternoon tea was hosted by Shreela Flather, Baroness Flather of Windsor and Maidenhead who has supported and hosted us in the past. She has held a number of senior posts in various organisations in which our members play a part including refugee, community, race relations and prison work.

Baroness Flather congratulated Bedford on its 80th birthday and helped in the ardous task of cutting the cake.  The event was organised by Bedford president Joan Howe.

When SI London Mayfair disbanded in April 2010, the members knew they would always stay in touch. It has fallen to Sakina Jetha (now of SI Central & SW) to arrange a social event for the former members and this was the third event which she has arranged. Previous events were lunch at the Ritz as well as a previous visit to the Sloane Club. It was also a double celebration as Eve Craske, now a member of SI Elmbridge, had celebrated her 80th birthday earlier in the year and we had champagne and birthday cake as part of the lunch.

SILM distributed the remainder of the charity monies raised during their final year to extend the finance of projects which they had started, this meant that Project Mala in Africa had a further 3years finance and a pupil in San Fernando, their Friendship Link, had a further year. Since the closure, members have joined other clubs, from SI Ilford to SI Newbury, SI Central & SW, SI Thames Valley and SI Elmbridge. The good work continues!

Our thanks to Sakina for arranging these get-togethers and we look forward to the next time.

Eileen Alexander (member of SI Bedford since 1952) was 100 years old on April 2nd 2011. She is quaffing her bubbly with the club and looking very lively for someone in her third day of partying.  We congratulate her and wish her well. Region President Johanna joined the celebrations.

Tuesday 8th March  International Women’s Day 100th Anniversary

(Picture is 2010 Walk)

“Women on the Bridge” London Millennium Bridge – joint event with Women for Women International (WWI) – see the website www.womenforwomen.org/bridge

There will be events in the UK and all over the world.

The London event is the main event and it’s in our Region!

Liz Morgan-Lewis will speak alongside people like Annie Lennox and leading politicians after the march.

Sign up for an event on the WWI website www.womenforwomen.org/bridge or contact Jane Slatter.

The march will leave Borough Market at 11am (meet from 10am), walking along the south side of the river to Millennium Bridge, crossing the Thames to the North side then continuing west along the river walk past Victoria Embankment Gardens, then crossing back along Hungerford Bridge to the South side of the river and finishing at the Royal Festival Hall for speeches, music and celebrations at the Royal Festival Hall from 12.30pm to 1.30pm, where we will have a Soroptimist stall.

Wear all of your Soroptimist sashes, tabards, sweatshirts and bring all your banners, signs and umbrellas etc. Bring your friends and don’t forget to get publicity for Soroptimists both before and after the event – press release templates are available in the Members area of the SIGBI website www.soroptimist-gbi.org/members/ under “Communications”.

On Saturday 5 February 2011 we held the Incoming President Workshop which included Elects, Vice and was hosted by Region President Johanna Raffan and led by Teams of Excellence trainer Eileen Shaw, both from SI Thames Valley. We were also joined by members of the Exec Committee.

The Region holds this event every year and helps to introduce the new presidents to the Committee and to understand how the Region moves forward within the SIGBI Federation. After the introductions it was clear that we had a mix of recycled Presidents, members of longstanding who finally wanted to take office, and those newer members, who wanted to make an early start in club life.

Given this range, it is clear that these personalities are within every Club, and one of the fundamental messages from every President should be to recognise the differences within her club. It is important to recognise strengths, encourage the less committed, and to curb over enthusiasm where it prevents others taking part. The exercises we did during the morning were therefore meant to help recognise and make these characteristics work to the benefit of the club.

Eileen has a marvellous way of introducing characters and uses them as role play. She has a set of Smurfs, each of which represents a different character – it’s a bit of fun but works well. Each person has to describe what she thinks the character would bring to the club, and there are often two sides. It gives us an opportunity to take a step back and evaluate each person and her attributes.

It is also an opportunity to discuss Federation expectations and strategies and how they can be implemented at club level. Clubs have different personalities so may prefer to select certain elements within Federation plans which they feel their club can achieve with the members they have. We discussed how meetings are held, content, venue and how often they are held.

The finale was a fond look back to how things were, and also made us think about who we were. We were asked to bring a hat, a retro look to how one dressed up for meetings complete with gloves, in earlier years. We each matched the gloves and hats and it was interesting to see the change of formality and also gave us the opportunity to be a different person, associated with that hat!

After which, in true Soroptimist style, we went to the local pub for lunch………………….

Julie Blackwell   IPP London Chilterns Region