We were pleased to donate £400 over 3 years from our reserve funds ringfenced for the education of girls towards the marine engineering apprenticeship of Polly Mead Kemp.  Polly had been selected to be part of the long term support of the Menai Heritage Sailing Project. She joined us on a club evening to share in her experiences to date as she continues her apprenticeship locally. We also heard that the project is based around a local yacht -The Menai Strait One Design, as they are a fleet of boats designed by a local naval architect and all built on Gallows Point between 1937 and 1952.  They all still exist, ‘live’ locally and are probably the oldest complete fleet of 17 or more One Design yachts in the world. The key activities are associated with ongoing work to preserve, renovate and sail this unique heritage

Saturday morning and the Bangor Soroptimists came together in the Park and Share car park at Llanfair PG to exchange toiletries for the Women’s Refuge; bedding and towels for Penrhyn House; bottle tops and can ring pulls (to make into plastic chairs and ring clutch bags); food for the Cathedral Foodbank. What a great turnout and fantastic donations on a bitterly cold December morning and wonderful seeing and catching up with friends again.

The speaker at our recent zoom meeting was Fiona Owens from the Abbey Road Centre, a Mental Health and Wellbeing Centre located in Bangor, Gwynedd. Their aim is to support the people in the local community to improve their mental and physical wellbeing through activities such as art, crafts, a reading group, gardening, games, quizzes etc. Fiona explained that the centre began in the early 80s, now operating a drop-in day-care service as well as room hire and tenancies. The centre is funded by the Health Board and Gwynedd Council. At present they only work with adults and within office hours due to funding issues. There is a team of five and they can support up to 70 individuals per week, referred through GPs or self-referred. Our club have helped paint rooms and provided hanging baskets to support them. New members are always welcome. Click

Some of our club members met at the Beach Road Car Park, Bangor on a May weekend in order to swap things that had been collected and donated for various charities:- Enormous amount of bottle tops collected to recycle to make furniture Can ring pulls for the Purple Community Fund http://www.purpleteardrop.org.uk/ Warm clothing, bedding and hand knitted children’s garments for CEFN refugee collection Clothes, towels and toys for North Wales Blind shop https://www.nwsb.org.uk/ Old Jewellery for Alzheimer’s Society https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/ Stamps for the Dog’s Trust https://www.dogstrust.org.uk/ Toiletries for the Women’s Refuge https://www.welshwomensaid.org.uk/ Maggie’s flower baskets for the Abbey Road Centre https://www.abbeyroadcentre.co.uk/

Two of our members, Sian and Andy, took part in the Virtual MoonWalk London challenge this May. Sian is an experienced London MoonWalker and Andy a MoonWalk newbie. ‘Virtual’ means that this year they were walking locally and in daylight! They did a Half Moon – or half-marathon – of 13.1 miles along the Menai Straits between Gwynedd and Anglesey in North Wales. They aimed for £250 but have raised over £600 so far. Well done both! If you would like to sponsor them you can at https://walkthewalk.enthuse.com/pf/andy-hawkins

Although covid regulations delayed some of our recycling and repurposing project we gave toiletries to the mothers in the local Women’s Refuge, we had a store cupboard clear-out of donations for the cathedral food-bank, we sent antique and vintage items to the Vintage Cash Cow which raised £421 for our president’s Fund and we sent 3 bags of costume jewellery to the Alzheimer’s Society (https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/get-involved/make-donation/recycling)

It is our end of year Christmas Zoom and we had fun! There was an Xmas quiz; we toasted our friends and we also displayed the results of turning empty plastic milk bottles, old tin cans, old greeting cards and rings pulls into something useful and pretty. Prizes were given! Here are some of the results:

This has been a very challenging time globally but all our members have been amazing. True friendship and kindness has shone through during this extremely difficult experience. We have even found unexpected delights as communities come together and where there is time to stand and stare. Like many at this time, we are overcoming technical challenges and having virtual meetings via Zoom on a regular basis. Those members unable to join us are contacted afterwards via our ‘buddy system’. This works very well and means all our members can keep in touch. Another way of keeping in touch is our WhatsApp Sorops Group where we share many hilarious videos, jokes and quizzes to keep us amused! On a more serious note, it is a way of making sure that all our members are keeping safe and well with help wherever it is needed. Despite the