International Women’s Day 2012

It was a fabulous day on 8 March. There was face-painting outside the Tate Modern, where Women for Women International was joined by many Soroptimists.

In front of the Millennium Bridge with St Pauls as a backdrop, it was a memorable experience. Members of SI London Chilterns Region led the Soroptimist banner parade across the bridge and on to the Embankment. Members of the public showed their support by honking car horns and some asked what it was about. A surprising number of people did not know about International Women’s Day.

This reinforced the idea that we should make more of this in the future for SI and club’s friendahip links. Out of the 200 or so Bridge events organised by WforW, 20 of these were organised by Soroptimist clubs. We should hterefore encourage our friendship links to take part on 8 March 2013 and make a bigger contribution to show support for women worldwide, and reecognition of their rights. Although the majority of Soroptimists were from clubs in the Chilterns region, we had supporters from Chesterfield, Warsaw and Barnstaple to name but some.

As we came to the end of the hour’s march, the procession filedi nto the South Bank Centre where we were addressed by Bianca Jagger, Andrew Mitchell – Minister of International Economic Development and Cherie Blair. Afterwards we were joined by the grand-daughter and the geat grand-dsughter of Emmeline Pankhurst. After all this is where the movement started with Votes for women and rights for women.