Carol Bailey, Region President of SI Midland Chase visited Cannock Soroptimists to tell them about the recent International conference held in Istanbul which she had attended as their representative. One of the things she had particularly enjoyed was the opportunity to meet with members of SI from all over the world, seeing and hearing at first hand the wonderful projects being undertaken to enable, educate and empower women and girls on all of our continents. The SI theme for the next four years was confirmed as ‘Educate to Lead’.
An important item on the agenda was information on the White Ribbon Campaign which has been running for over 20 years and with which Cannock Soroptimists have been actively involved. This is the campaign to engage men in action to stop domestic violence and to encourage gender equality in the workplace – women cannot do either alone, men need to be involved, too.
Membership, in particular encouraging younger women to join the organisation, is always high on the agenda of all service organisations and this was certainly the case in Istanbul. Many young women spoke to conference, some telling their stories of how SI had helped them and enabled them to live independently, to bring up and support their family or to study; others told of the way they, as Soroptimists, had set about making these things happen.
At the heart of Soroptimism is their Programme Action work: advocacy, project work, fund raising, awareness raising of issues such as domestic violence, FGM, child health and mortality, education for girls, training for women to support themselves and their families and Carol saw and heard many very moving examples of all of this. Cannock members of SI, along with members worldwide will continue to work to help those women and girls who need help, or, in the words of SI Strategic Director to ‘leave no stone unturned when beneath it lies a woman or a girl who needs our help’.
Photos attached: l to r: June Bould, Membership Officer, SI Cannock & District; Carol Bailey, President, SI Midland Chase Region