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

On Friday 25th April 13 East Grinstead Soroptimists met for a coffee and chat at Chequer Mead for our monthly Orange Cafe meeting. It is always good to get together and catch up socially, but is also an opportunity to let others know about the organisation.       At the annual AGM we said a big thank you to President Alison for having run the club so successfully over the past year and she was presented with a plant for her garden. Alison passed over the leadership of the club to Bridget. We are looking forward to what President Bridget intends to do in the next 12 months, concentrating on local needs, and wish her good luck for the coming year. At our club meeting on Wednesday 16th April we were delighted to welcome Rosalind Crowther, from Sackville College, and presented her with a

At our club meeting on Wednesday 19th March we welcomed Ian Wilkins, Head of Fundraising and Relationships at Crawley Open House. He has spoken before as we have supported Open House for several years. It was an extremely informative evening. For further information please refer to the article on the Open House on our home page.   On Saturday 8th March a group of us set up a stall to celebrate International Women’s Day. We enjoyed chatting over several cups of coffee and were delighted to be able to talk about Soroptimists to several interested women and are hoping we may have gained some new members. A big thank you to Chequer Mead Theatre for allowing us to display information about Soroptimists in The Apron, their very popular cafe.