At our monthly speaker meeting on 4th February we welcomed Lisa Marie McNamara, landlady of one of East Grinstead’s most prominent pubs, Dunning’s Mill, and named after Elvis Presley’s daughter as her mother was one of his biggest fans!  She has been running pubs for 35 years but has only been in East Grinstead since 2017. She employs 28 local people, many of who have been with her for most of the time she has been running this pub. Lisa feels that her premises serve a host of reasons but most important is being somewhere that people can feel safe and know that they will be welcomed.  Dunnings is a space that not only sells alcohol and food but allows people to come along and socialise and, for her that is an important reason for being in this industry.  Lisa enjoys holding events  to bring

On Saturday 31st January Sheila and Helen represented EGSI at the Community and Volunteer Fair at the Meridian Hall. They spoke to lots of people and handed out several leaflets to possible new Soroptimists. They also had conversations with a couple  of organisations who expressed an interest in coming to one of our meetings to give a talk. A most successful and worthwhile morning.   At a busy meeting on Wednesday 21st of January we were delighted to first welcome Rosalind Crowther,who is the present warden at Sackville College. Our Christmas mince pie morning in December raised over £400 which is traditionally donated to Sackville College. It was gratefully received by Rosalind, who also commented on the delightful mince pies made by Angela and how to make Christmas gifts and decoration supplied by Helen. Having had to to cancel Steve Pond’s talk a couple of

      At our last meeting of the year we enjoyed an exciting Beetle Drive followed by a very festive quiz, which was helped along with some nibbles and mulled wine. A big thank you to Maureen and her crew for arranging the evening. we finished a lovely evening with a Secret Santa and some carols. A very happy Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone.          On Saturday 13th December East Grinstead Soroptimists took donations to Jane G’s house for distribution to our two local charities, I Choose Freedom and Crawley Open House. Kate, from I Choose Freedom, came to collect the Christmas donations and was amazed by the amount of bags. Jane O had also managed to receive a donation of 70 teddies from RAFGC, and though they looked so adorable Soroptimists restrained from adopting any of them and

        Beryl’s beautiful illustration of the activity at Lingfield Nature reserve on Sunday 30th November. A new crabapple tree was planted by Alison and her husband while Chris J. cleared around the tree and rose which are tributes to her mother, a past Soroptimist. Our link to the Nature reserve is through one of our members Anne R. The following are some photos from the day.                         On Friday 28th November East Grinstead Soroptimists met for coffee and mince pies. Not only did Angela share her house with us all but she had made over 70 mince pies. Helen brought along her fabulous homemade craft gifts as well as her famous fudge. Jane provided a bric a brac  stall. All proceeds went to Sackville College. East Grinstead Community Bonfire On the

On Friday 24th October we held our monthly Orange cafe (a day early). Once again we enjoyed the company of fellow Soroptimists. This month some members brought their knitting with them as we are busy knitting white hearts for 25th November, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. We will be attaching the hearts to white ribbons, the symbol of the day, and handing them out to other people enjoying a coffee at Chequer Mead.   On Tuesday 21st October Gill, Sue and Hilary “woman” a stall at the Looking After You!e vent at Chequer Mead. We were one of many organisations promoting health and welfare. Although we did not attract new members it was a marvellous networking opportunity and was well worth attending. Sue had a particularly busy day as in the afternoon she appeared on Meridian Radio in a programme

SIEG were delighted to be joint winners of the Grace Onions Award, alongside SI Canterbury, for the work that they have done on the environment. The certificate was presented to them on 20th of September at the 66th Annual General meeting of the SISEE region. The Grace Onions Award is an annual award to commemorate her lifeand all the wonderful work she carried out to address climate action and biodiversity. SIEG members have continued their environmental work by participating in Citizen Science Surveys, such as the Big Garden Bird Watch, the National Butterfly Survey and No MowbMay amongst others. The work at Lingfield nature reserve continues, planting trees and hedgerows and we have submitted a video of the work for the Birmingham Conference’25 for the SI International president Siew Yong Gnanalingam. Briar’s Environmental Centre gets support from members for outreach schoolwork and visitors to the

Jane has been helping fellow Soroptimist, Jill, empty her house of things that she no longer needs.Together they  went to Ardingly CarBoot sale, armed with items to sell, Soroptimist information, cards and pens. As a charity they only had to pay half price for the pitch. Many people asked about the charity with one kind gentleman making a donation. £110 was raised which Jill kindly donated to our charity fund

  On Sunday 21st July, twelve club members and Soroptimisters supported Regional President Sue Edgar, one of the East Grinstead Soroptimists, at her Regional Lunch at the London Beach Country Hotel Spa & Golf Club, Tenterden.  With many other members from across the Region, we enjoyed a delicious lunch, impressive raffle and a delightful afternoon catching up with friends.  The day started a little damp, but the sun came out during the afternoon and provided a beautiful setting for the event. Helen Teare, a trustee of Breast Cancer Kent, spoke to us about her experience of breast cancer and how it led to her becoming a trustee of the charity.  The Charity raises funds to enable leading edge equipment to be purchased for the Kent cancer centres at Maidstone/TW and Canterbury Hospitals, providing care for Kent and East Sussex residents.  The event raised almost £2,000

  We were delighted to welcome Caroline Metcalf to our meeting on Wednesday 4th June to give us a talk on Sackville College, Then and Now. Caroline is a guide for visitors at both Sackville College and St Swithun’s parish church. She has a great love of history and has spent her adult life studying and teaching History. She has a MA in Medieval Studies and is working on a fifteenth – century manuscript. Caroline gave a fascinating talk which told us much about the history of the college. The College was founded in the year 1609 by the Will of Robert Sackville, 2nd Earl of Dorset. This provided a sum of money with which to buy land and ‘build a convenient house of brick and stone’ to be an almshouse. For many years part of the College was also used to provide overnight accommodation

At our club meeting on Wednesday 7th May we welcomed Gilly Halcrow from the Woodland Trust. (Apologies for the photo Gilly!) She gave us a fascinating talk about the Trust andsome historical facts about trees that few of us knew. Did you know… It takes 40 years for an oak tree to produce it’s first acorn. It took 600 oak trees to build the Mary Rose. There are temperate rainforests in the UK. In the 1987 Great Storm we lost 15 million trees. in the last 45 years 43 million trees have been planted in the UK The oldest tree in the UK is the Fortingall Yew in Perthshire, Scotland which is at least 2,000- 3,000 years old and may even be as much as 5,000years       On Monday 5th May Jane, Helen and Gill ran a Soroptimist’s stall at East Grinstead’s annual