The magnificent sum of £923 has been raised in sponsorship by Ruth, Audrey, Janice, Liz and Marion for the local charity and social enterprise Cfine (Community Food Initiatives North East). Cfine fight against food poverty through their food bank and support for individuals and families living in poverty. They provide a range of support and services for and with disadvantaged, vulnerable and low income individuals, families and communities in North East Scotland. Their social enterprise delivers fruit and vegetable boxes throughout Aberdeen and the profits are reinvested into maintaining and expanding a holistic system for people facing difficulty. Ruth, Audrey, Janice, Liz and Marion took part in the "Appetite for Change" challenge to live on £2 a day or less for a week and this to include all meals and drinks - quite a challenge for some of the coffee addicts! However sponsorship from friends

We have been collecting cleaning materials and toiletries for the women supported by Grampian Women’s Aid. Grampian Women’s Aid offers a free, confidential and non-judgemental, specialist service to women, children and young people in Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire who have experienced domestic abuse. SI Aberdeen members are continuing to collect for Grampian Women’s Aid during September and October.

Our gardening members are reusing and recycling plastic and other materials in the garden. Cardboard and plastics are used for sowing seeds, potting on and germination. cardboard egg boxes, plastic containers and plastic bags potatoes in 20kg bird seed bags plastic bags used for potatoes and growing on perennials

We have been busy tidying up and replanting the Soroptimist logo in the Duthie Park in Aberdeen. The logo was planted by the park staff in 2019 to mark our club’s 90th anniversary. This year the staff have been very busy catching up after lockdown so the club have taken over the display. We are very grateful to Chris Wardle of the National Trust who donated the beautiful pink begonias which are very striking. Pink is of course not the usual Soroptimist colour but we think it looks very attractive!

We are delighted to be working in conjunction with SIGBI to support this project. At our May Zoom meeting many of our members were keen to support Pat Stewart who has submitted a piece to the Big Story. Donations came flooding in and President Janice helped us out by committing the £400’s we had all raised direct to Pat’s story, which converted to a fabulous £900 for EG in Nepal. Well done all SI Aberdeen ladies for their sterling effort

Aberdeen Soroptimists at this difficult time are supporting 4 local charities

Here are a few thing we have being doing over the past few months: A selection of the fantastic donations of toiletries and stationery now boxed and ready to be handed over to Stella’s Voice, a wonderful local charity supporting the most vulnerable children and young people in Moldova. Members of SI Aberdeen have been collecting these items over a 6-month period. Aberdeen Soroptimists handing out 100 roses to 100 women to celebrate International Women’s Day 2020. Some of our members have been sewing scrubs bags for Aberdeen Royal Infirmary staff.

We were delighted to welcome via zoom 22 of our 29 members to our first meeting since our “email agm” a few weeks ago Janice chaired a very lively, informative and productive meeting. Everyone present was in agreement that we should release some of our funds immediately as many of the local charities we support are in need of money. We also agreed to release immediately £100 for the empowering girls in Nepal fund. We unanimously agreed to task our steering group who are meeting soon to disburse our money wisely. I hope everyone enjoyed the meeting as much as I did. Roll on our next club meeting on June 3rd. Media member Kay