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

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

Scotland’s Charity Air Ambulance (SCAA) will station its second charity-funded aircraft in the north east – with hopes of launching the service by late 2019. SCAA’s new Aberdeen-based aircraft – callsign Helimed 79 – will join its stablemate Helimed 76 already operating out of Perth Airport. The strengthened SCAA fleet will effectively double the number of helicopter air ambulances operating in Scotland, working alongside the two Government funded helicopters based at Glasgow and Inverness. S I Aberdeen have raised £660 to support this worthy cause