On Wednesday 20th May we welcomed one of our local charities, Bloomin’ Arts, to our club meeting. Ria has been working for the charity for three years and is their first full-time employee. We were delighted not only to hear her speak but to hear the voices of Polly and Joe, two of the students. Bloomin’ Arts is a creative arts organisation driven by the voice of disabled adults. Everybody is heard, valued and empowered to make choices. Accessibility is a key to what they do encouraging self expression and confidence through art, theatre, dance and media. They offer numerous courses which are either half or full day and at present have 79 students. Once  students have registered with the organisation they can continue taking courses for as long as they wish. At the moment the age range is 19 – 60 years of age

  On Wednesday 15th April we were delighted to welcome a new member to our club. Alison Allerson may be new to EGSIGB but she has been a Soroptimist for many years. Recently she left her Tamworth club and moved south to be nearer her family. To our delight although not living in East Grinstead she chose to join our club. We are sure she is going to be a very valuable member.   On Wednesday 1st April we were very pleased to welcome Richard Pike to talk to us about Nutley Windmill. Richard is a trustee of the Windmill, and showed us a photo of when he first became involved, at about the age of 6!! We are lucky to have such a fine and historic windmill on our doorstep in Ashdown Forest. The windmill is the last Open Trestle Post Mill in Sussex

On Friday 20th  March Sue and Gill were part of a team of professionals ( or ex- professionals!) who spent a very enjoyable day interviewing students at Sackville School as part of their work experience programme. Students had been given a selection of job scenarios, from which they chose one and then submitted a CV and letter of application. They then had a 15 minute job”interview” followed by a brief written report and verbal feedback.  Both Sue and Gill were impressed with many of the students applications and interviews and also enjoyed others who gave some extremely amusing responses, including the student who, having not completed an application letter, discussed the position he wanted in the future… a beach lifeguard. A slight problem in that he wasn’t a very good swimmer! Still it enabled a good conversation about the skills you might need to have

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