SI Best Practice Award
SI Bournemouth has been awarded an Soroptimist International Best Practice Award for the project ‘Cementing Futures – Literacy in Bangladesh’, under the Programme Goal of ‘Eliminating poverty and gender discrimination through ensuring women’s full social and economic rights’.
The decision was announced by the SI Board which met in Denmark on Tuesday, 4 August 2009. A formal presentation will be made at the SIGBI Conference in Cardiff in October.
President Lynne Lacey said
“I am so proud of what the Cementing Futures Programme Action Group have achieved so far; their innovative ideas and endless energy have been amazing and the support from members of the Bournemouth Club has been unstinting. The Club’s relationship with our sister club in Dhaka has always been strong but it is wonderful to see how this has been built on. The friendships that have been formed will no doubt last a lifetime and this working partnership will make a difference to the lives of so many young people.”
Project Leader, Debbie Rogers spoke of the group’s response to the news,
“Once we got over the initial shock of receiving this award, I would have to say that we were then very excited and honoured to be given this. As a group we still feel that we are in the early stages of the fund-raising side of the project and were a bit stunned to be receiving such a prestigious award at such an early stage. However, we then thought about it and realised that we have been working on this project for over a year now and the team have put a lot of time and effort into making this project happen. A lot of this work will never really be seen but will make the charity run efficiently and smoothly and help us to achieve our £300,000 target more easily.
We researched the project first by visiting Bangladesh and discussing with members of SI Dhaka what type of project would make the biggest and most lasting difference to the children living in poverty. SI Dhaka then spent 6 months researching and preparing a project that they felt would make this difference. SI Bournemouth then spent 3 months on a feasibility study to ensure that we could manage and support a project of this magnitude.
This past year has been spent on preparing a business plan, governance documents, raising £5,000 to obtain charitable status which we now have and preparing a marketing strategy and obtaining and preparing materials to support that. We are now ready to launch … full steam ahead!”
We eagerly look forward to the formal presentation in Cardiff-a justifiable cause to celebrate!