Members and friends enjoyed a social evening at Liz’s house , where we swapped scarves and gave donations which amounted to £192. Dorothy gave a demonstration of scarf-tying and there were refreshments and a lucky draw. Scarves were displayed in every downstairs room – so we had a great choice of beautiful and all-too tempting items! The funds raised will swell the coffers of the club and enable us to continue work such as supporting the women’s refuge.

On May 16th we collected over £100 for WaterAid at Tees Cottage Pumping Station, Darlington. We gave out goodies provided by the charity and had a display of the club’s recent activities. It was Steam Punk weekend at the Victorian pumping station, so we had some very interesting visitors.

On the day after International Women’s Day we planted a Silver Birch in Darlington’s South Park in memory of our late member Gypsy Nichol. Gypsy was an active member of our club for 60 years – from 1964 to 2024. The tree is in a lovely spot overlooking the lake and near the tree that was planted to mark the Coronation of Charles III. We think Gypsy would be pleased!

On Monday 9th March four club members handed out a total of sixty roses to women in the town centre. They were all surprised and delighted. “This has made my day!” was a common reaction. We celebrated International Women’s Day and made more people aware of Soroptimists.

A steady stream of visitors came to our exhibition to celebrate International Women’s Day. We were pleased to have coverage in the local press and to read so many very favourable comments on Facebook. 44 Darlington women – past and present – were highlighted.

Some of our members modelled the collection of spectacles which will be given to the Lions, who accept them for recycling. Two in-house speakers informed us about children’s preventable hearing loss and HPV vaccinations respectively. 

We sold all the tickets for our Pudding Party and raised nearly £670 for club funds. Everybody enjoyed the delicious puddings prepared by our members and were entertained by quizzes and a raffle.

A celebration of Friendship at our New Year meal at Meze (Turkish restaurant). Made it just before the end of January!

We discussed plans for the year: in particular our forthcoming fundraiser in February.

  We donated toiletries, food and warm scarves to the annual Festive Feed at Babul’s, Darlington.