Lynn Ellis is the Friendship Link with our Japanese Soroptimist sisters. Yuko Tsuji is our contact . She has twice attended our club meetings since we started our link.
Lynn was able to meet up with her last summer, when she was over here to visit her son at school. Yuko was over here in March, but her business was such that we were not able to meet up. However, Yuko might be coming here in May. I hope so!
Yuko has sent recent news from her club
News from Yuko Tsuji (Yuko is top left as you look at the photograph)
Our club candidate for Soroptimist Ruby Award received the 2nd place for Japan Nishi Region just recently. I will share articles with photos later. The award winner is a female journalist who used to be our member who went into affected areas of flood/landslides last summer to take photos and ask the locals what they needed, and spread the words. She eventually collaborated with MontBlanc the camp tools brand and helped them donate their products to the affected areas effectively. She also collected sanitary pads etc, women’s necessities and allocated them to evacuation points.
Our club received masses of amount of money from the region to donate t our local communities, schools and kindergartens to help them restore from the devastating torrential rain from last July. We used the money to donate Japanese drums for kindergarten kids to replace their old ones which got buried in mud due to landslides, picture books to a school, and playground facilities such as swing and slide to another kindergarten which had their playground wiped out by the flood.