Our 75th Anniversary Celebrations continued in September with a 1930s Dinner attended by members, guests and former Soroptimists., The period theme was enhanced by some special wardrobe effects. Our President, Kirsteen Harding is seen here with  Jacquie Bachman who was inducted as a new member at this special event. Note the stylish fashion with both wearing elegant headgear. The speaker for the evening was Eileen Barker who told us  of her 1930’s childhood  in Bournemouth, giving a moving but humorous  account of the poverty and hardships that many families experienced. As ever there were pleas for help- from Bobbie  at “Waterpoint No 1” at the Bournemouth Marathon, and from Yvonne for us  to buy tickets for  the Fashion show in aid of Bournemouth Womens’ Refuge at The Hpuse of Fraser on September 26th. Liz Dominey gave us an update about the successful  Dhaka Literary Projects

Our splendid 75th Celebratory lunch on 18th May, with presentations by the winning teams in our School Challenge reported on elsewhere has been a highlight of the project. We have received the good wishes and warm thanks from many who attended. The guest speaker Roma Agrawal, a Structural Engineer who worked on London’s Shard building has written ” It was a delight to see such driven women really making a difference in society and it was an honour to be part of that” Thank you Roma for the kind words.

Celebrations for our 75th year as a Club got underway at the Bournemouth International Centre on Saturday 18th May. A Reception attended by The Mayor of Bournemouth, Cllr Phil Stanley-Watts started an interesting event which included a talk by Roma Agrawal, Young Structural Engineers of 2011. Roma also presented  Prizes to teams from Arnewood School and Bournemouth School For Girls.These were for our “Celebrating Science Competition” designed to encourage girls to take science subjects in their exams. Over 100 friends and supporters enjoyed the day which ended with a lunch  

Treff's Cake made specially for our 75th Celebrations. Over 100 people joined us at Bournemouth  International Centre for a lunch to mark out 75 years as a Soroptimist Club.

Kirsteen Harding is our new President for 2013/14 .Here she is with her chain of office receiving congratulations from Bobbie White.We celebrated after out AGM with a meal at the Belvedere, enjoying a sociable evening. Looking forwards to a wonderful year.

Eve Bonham, well known author, traveller and woman of many hobbies will be our speaker in May. She is also the organiser of Bournemouth’s Festival of Words, has lived in many different countries and sailed the world’s oceans. We are delighted to be able to welcome her on 20th May.

We have just heard from Rita Allen- our Club has won the competition for renaming the 3E Project: Healthcare. At a meeting we had a collective thinking session and as a result put forward “The BIG Project” (Birthing In Gambia) We are delighted that 60 other Clubs entered the competition, it makes us feel really good!

These names were the titles of the winning entries of our STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) Project for teams of girls. We had challenged them to design,build and cost a project to help people in the poorest parts of the world. The Winners (Year 9 Key Stage 3) were The Arnewood School, New Milton  with their “Waterphant”, a device for producing clean water using evaporation and condensation. And for Year 10,Key Stage 4 Bournemouth School for Girls invented a snake farm to allow venom to be extracted and used for medical research. This was called a “Snaid”   Here are the winning teams.The awards will be presented at our Club’s 75th Anniversary Lunch on 18th May by Roma Agrewal, herself Young Structural Engineer of the Year 2011 and a Senior Architect on the Shard. The judges for the competition were provided by several different local

  Despite the cold weather several members from our two clubs helped with some early Spring gardening at the Dorset ARC (Assault Referral Centre) in Bournemouth. Luckily staff at the Centre provided warm drinks which helped prevent frostbite!