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SI Reading, Wokingham & Bracknell members, partners and friends gathered for our Charter Dinner Meeting on 3 November.
Our speaker was Alan Bunce, Community Editor, of the Reading Evening Post, who spoke about his work as a journalist. He also gave us some valuable tips on ways of getting our club publicised.
London Chilterns President Yinka Soetan (left) at the first club visit of her year, with Club President Brenda Jenkins.
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.
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
Congratulation to Jean for the excellent article. Your points on the value of Soroptimist were very well made.
My attempt to copy this is rather fuzzy. You may get a better copy by pasting the following into your browser:
http://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk/launch.aspx?referral=other&pnum=&refresh=7a1Q0Tc5z04E&EID=50e786ee-c629-4dee-ba75-9b9d94f0a6ac&skip=true
You will be thrilled to hear that Soroptimists from London Chilterns, South East and Southern Regions joined in the march on the Millennium Bridge on Tuesday 8 March. It took one and a half hours but the circuit was held in bright sunshine and there was plenty to feel proud about. Arriving at the Festival Hall on South Bank, after crossing the Hungerford Bridge, there were rallying speeches from Annie Lennox, Bianca Jagger, Lynne Featherstone (Equalities Minister) and our own Federation President Liz Morgan-Lewis, and also some stirring words from the great grand-daughter of Emmeline Pankhurst.
After the speeches, we went back to our stand where were able to speak with interested parties along with other participants such as Care international and Women for Women International. For once we had been given a great introduction by the organisers and the word Soroptimist was used several times and re-asserted by Liz, so we had an opportunity to make more of ourselves. SIGBI President Liz says ‘International Women’s Day is very special for us, this year’s message of peace and equality are vital if we are to transform the lives of women and girls in the future. This has been a wonderful day standing shoulder to shoulder with women around the world to celebrate the 100th Anniversary of International Women’s Day’.
There were many other Bridge events around the world, in total over 400, of which 45 were organised by Soroptimist Clubs. The bridge symbolises building bridges of peace around the world. We were told that 100 women had stood on a bridge in Kabul to celebrate, whilst two bombs had exploded around them. They had stayed long enough to make their point. If they can do this, it is up to us to make our voices heard too.
Please also see:www.soroptimist-gbi.org and news page: www.soroptimist-gbi.org/blog/2011/03/01/100th-international-womens-day-soroptimists-inspiring-action/
Training in Public Speaking at the House of Lords with Baroness Flather
There were nine of us present at the Public Speaking workshop hosted by Baroness Shreela Flather on Tuesday 15 June. She is a feisty lady and broke the mould when she became the first Asian in the House of Lords and a woman too. There was a good representation from the Clubs of SILC Region and we spent the morning showing her our prepared speeches. It was clear that perhaps we didn’t all interpret the meaning of Public Speaking correctly and she made it clear who had it right or not. We were invited to mark certain elements and make our own comments about each other.
It was during this discussion that other talents became apparent and after lunch we reorganised our speeches, some changed content totally and we re-presented the results. This time around the messages were more succinct, better timed, and more entertaining – amazing what a few sandwiches, juice and coffee can do. It showed that we had listened and taken note of what she had said. It was a pleasant informal day in one of the meeting rooms used by the Lords.
We were delighted to buy signed copies of the Baroness’ book ‘Woman: Acceptable exploitation for Profit’ at the end of the day. This event has first been arranged by former Region President Sylvia Watson and had taken a while to come to fruition. The Baroness confirmed she would be willing to do this again so we look forward to offering spaces to more Soroptimist members from the Region to take part.
SI THAMES VALLEY have been really lucky in recruiting two new soroptimists who are directly connected with Sierra Leone. Many clubs will already know of Rosie Simbo who is a specialist midwife dealing with FGM and HIV/Aids mothers. Rosie has also started a field project in her area, recruiting 50 women to plant seeds and grow much needed vegetables which they can feed their children and also sell.
Lori Spragg is a local Marlow lady who has already made a huge difference to the literacy chances of children in Sierra Leone.
This is Lori’s latest newsletter. We hope you enjoy it as much as we do and if you have any contacts with schools, libraries we would be delighted to collect any books you can deliver, either to our Fashion Party in Bourne End at Sat 11 Sept, our next club meeting on 21 Sept in Bourne End or to our next Regional Meeting at Lancaster Hall Hotel.
West Wycombe community library are interested in twinning with the mini-library.
The Fair Trade charity fashion show organised by Soroptimist International London Chilterns Region on 27th May was a fabulous event. The event raised money for Project SIerra, which helps disadvantaged women and children in Sierra Leone face their futures with confidence www.projectsierra.org
Julie Blackwell, President of SI London Chilterns Region is pictured here on the left of the picture with all of the models. While guests enjoyed a glass of wine during the evening the girls showed off a gorgeous selection of People Tree Fair Trade fashion, and two dresses made by women in SIerra Leone who have been supported by Project SIerra.
In addition to the fashion show there were displays for guests to view with information from Soroptimist International, The Fairtrade Foundation, Women for Women International, clothes, jewellery and gift items from Natura, Alkara and Briony Bell-Burrow, with personal beauty treatments from Illuminata. The event was held in the prestigious surroundings of the library in the University Women’s Club in Mayfair.
