Our club supports local, national and international projects including children in India, supporting Womens’ Aid, helping the environment with regular beach cleans, supporting the Regional Project Alcohol and Young Women, International Project – Project Sierra, and sending backpacks to school children in Afrcia.

The club has a wealth of different pperspectives, expertise and varied talents. We are a very friendly club with members of all ages from a wide range of backgrounds and welcome new members. We meet on the third Monday of the month at the Hilton Hotel, Coldram Newport, and have socials, project work events and regular meetings at other venues as well.

Click ‘contact us’ and complete the form if you wish to come to one of our events – we are waiting to welcome you.

On Monday 5th July, Newport & District Soroptimist members undertook another beach clean at St Brides, Wentloog on behalf of the Marine Conservation Society.

A very pleasant and satisfying couple of hours were spent collecting rubbish from the grassy areas above the tide line. All the rubbish was again catalogued on behalf of the Marine Conversation Society.

The team had a bar meal in a local Pub after the event, and received many thanks from the landlord for helping to improve the local environment.

Our thanks also go to Keep Wales Tidy for providing gloves, bags, pickup sticks and other items.

About 40 people took part, which was an increase on last year.

Soroptimists walked with the Group and offered help or support where required. The weather was kind to us again and an enjoyable day was had by all.

Every one enjoyed the meal and found the talk interesting and motivating!

Mary’s Meals is an international movement to set up school feeding projects in communities where poverty and hunger prevent children from gaining an education. Mary’s Meals provides daily meals in school for over 400,000 children in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe.

Mary’s Meals not only addresses the immediate needs of hungry children by giving them a daily meal, it also allows those children to receive an education that can provide an escape from poverty for themselves and their communities.

On the evening we heard about two of their projects:

- Mary’s Meals provides daily meals to chronically hungry children in their local school. In this way the hungry child is encouraged to attend school and, through education gain a better future for himself and his communities.

One aspect of Mary’s Meals that constantly captures the public’s attention is the fact that it only costs £6.15 to provide a child in Malawi with Mary’s Meals for a year. And the average cost of Mary’s Meals across all our projects around the world is £9

- Back Pack Project. Very often families cannot afford to buy pencils, books or other vital items for school. Some even find it difficult to dress their children in suitable clothes to go to School.

The Backpack Project helps solve this problem by providing poor children with the things they need in school. It does this by inviting people to fill up an old school bag/back pack with some everyday school things. These bags will then be given out to children who really need them. The Backpack Project sent over 45,000 backpacks last year to some of the poorest children in the world: they have been sent to Malawi, Uganda, Liberia and Romania.

Wanted items

Backpack/School Bag
Exercise Book/Notepad
Pencils
Pens
Crayons
Eraser
Ruler
Sharpener
Pencil Case
Towel
Shorts/ skirt & t-shirt, or dress
Flip Flops/Sandals
Small Ball eg Tennis Ball
Soap
Toothbrush
Toothpaste
Spoon

For more information visit www.marysmeals.org/

A small group of club members – President Anne O’Donaghue, Anne Williams, Ann Hodgson and Angela Jenks visited Westonbirt on Saturday 22nd May 2010.

Westonbirt has one of the most spectacular collections of trees in the world . A place to relax and recharge. A place to learn and a resource for science.

Westonbirt Arboretum comprises some 18,000 trees and shrubs, over an area of approximately 600acres. Its 17 miles of marked paths are popular with visitors, and provide access to a wide variety of rare plants.  It is managed by the Forestry Commission.

The weather remained fine and we had a lovely walk through parts of the arboretum finishing off with a scrumptious lunch outside the cafe.

Well worth the visit and one that we would be happy to return to many times over.

President Anne O’Donaghue was joined by Ann Hodgson and Pat Rodway at the 90th celebrations of Soroptimist International of Bristol.

The celebration started with a service in the Lord Mayor’s Chapel (which is owned by the City of Bristol and thus has no specific Christian denomination) followed by tea in the Marriott Royal Hotel, which we were delighted to share with Soroptimist members from Clubs in Swindon, Torquay, Taunton, Bath, Weston Super Mare, Newport, South Wales and Runcorn, Cheshire together with the Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress of Bristol, several Rotarians and friends and family.

The Bristol club received messages of congratulation from their Regional President Wendy and from Federation President Jackie Mosedale together with many more messages from Soroptimists and their clubs around the world including Turkey, Russia, Bulgaria, Spain, France and several from the Americas and Canada.

The first meeting of the Bristol Club took place in the Royal Hotel on College Green, Bristol on 10th May 1920, although at that time it was called a Venture club.  At the tea in the Marriott, we were able to read the minutes of the club from the 1920s and see a list of members at that time with their categories a source of interest and amusement to us all.

It was a lovely afternoon.

Members of Soroptimist International of Newport attended their Annual General meeting on Monday 26th April 2010 at the Hilton Hotel, Newport. The meeting was followed by our Regalia Dinner, at which we welcomed into office our new President Anne O’Donaghue.

Anne has been a member of the club for some 5 years and works at Cardiff University as an IT HR Project Manager. She lives in Cwmbran.

Members of the Club met at a members house for a social get together to raise funds for Water Aid and to mark our 75th year as a Federation by raising £75.

It just so happens that it was St Patricks Day as well so we decided to ask everyone to dress in green – some managed it and others not!

Members brought along the food themselves and we had an excellent spread of food ranging from corn beef pie to salad to fruit salad or “yummy desserts” for pudding.

An excellent and cheap night for all plus a real opportunity for everyone to have a good natter about anything and everything.

And to top it all we raised approx £90 for Water Aid so well done everyone.

Two members of Newport & District Soroptimist International club, Ann Hodgson and Nerys Lines, along with other members of the Wales South Region participated in a Zip wire challenge to raise money for Licking Lassa Fever. Funds are still coming in, but we will update this post when we know the total amount raised.