Cannock Soroptimists joined their friendship link club in Melbourne, Australia this week – by zoom!!
Holding meetings using Zoom has provided some real bonuses – not least people from all over the world being able to get together. SI Cannock and SI Melbourne usually keep in touch with each other by email, sending messages and sharing newsletters, but his week they all attended the same meeting: it was 9.30am here in the UK and 6.30pm in Australia – and how marvellous it was to put faces to some of the names!
9 Cannock members joined the meeting and listened to their speaker, Josephine Beer, who works in the department of Health and Human Services in the state of Victoria. Josephine, also a Soroptimist, described how, at the start of the worldwide pandemic, she had been given the task to lead the work of handling the situation regarding all those returning to Victoria from overseas. The ‘returners’ had to be taken from either the airport or seaport to a hotel where they were quarantined for 14 days. Josephine set up a team of 120 people who contacted everyone in the hotels on day 3 of their quarantine and again on day 9, working to a specially prepared agenda. All on the team were all trained to question appropriately, to employ empathy, and to be able to recognise any mental health issues. In the early days (March and April) they were making 1,000 phone calls every day and making follow up referrals from 20% of those calls. Josephine is now back to her usual work within the community working to ensure the more vulnerable in their society have the help and support they need.
Sally Cole, also a Soroptimist, then told of the arduous journey she and her husband had to get home to Australia when they found themselves stranded in Lima, Peru as borders closed suddenly as the pandemic spread around the world. They were forced to quarantine as their travel arrangements were constantly cancelled and guidance changed. Eventually, after 5 and a half weeks in enforced lockdown they finally arrived home via a series of circuitous and very expensive flights with little food and water to finally reach Melbourne on a military aircraft. To say they were glad to get home is an understatement!
This meeting brought the message home very clearly – the situation we are all going through is the same, the world over. We are all dealing with the same issues whether we’re in the Northern or the Southern Hemisphere and as Soroptimists we are all working to support women and children by enabling, empowering, educating, however we can.
We all enjoyed the opportunity to meet together & some of our Melbourne sisters plan to rise very early to attend one of Cannock’s future meetings.
Photos attached: Members of SI Cannock attend SI Melbourne meeting on Zoom