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.

      On Saturday 8th February EGSI enjoyed a fund raising quiz at East Grinstead Sports Club. We were pleased to welcome friends and family as well as members and were delighted that the Mayor and his wife joined us. It was great fun and raised over £440. Our thanks go to Alan, President Alison’s husband, for writing such a fiendish quiz!   At our meeting on Wednesday 5th February we were delighted to welcome Charlotte Holmes who spoke to us about her career. After a year at university she decided that wasn’t the way she wanted her future to go so she took a risk and left and obtained an office role at Chelsea football club. She stayed there for a a few years before moving into fund raising roles, initially helped fund raise for IVF charities, until moving to work for Leukaemia

  On Tuesday 22nd January members spent a morning working on the Programme Action forms.   On January 15th, at the first meeting of the new year we welcomed Sarah Baker who delivered a fascinating talk entitled Living with Allergies – A Personal Perspective, telling us about Anaphylaxis.  Sarah has worked with an Anaphylactic Organisation, but also suffers from allergies connected to root vegetables, quite an unusual allergy. We were told how to recognise if someone was going into an anaphylactic shock and how to issue an auto-injector which should be carried at all times by someone who is aware they suffer from an allergy. The most important thing we learnt was that if in doubt administer the adrenaline injection as, even if not needed, it has no long term effect and call 999. Even though it was quite scary we left the meeting with far more

  On 18th December we enjoyed a Christmas Celebration at President Alison’s house. It was a good start to the Christmas period. On Wednesday 4th December we were delighted to welcome Katy Bourne OBE, Sussex Police and Crime Commissioner to our club. She is seen here in the centre of the photo with President Alison to her left and Maria Ody, Mayoress on her right. Katy delivered an amusing and informative talk about her role, why it was deemed necessary when it was introduced in 2012 and some of her achievements. Katy has been the Sussex Police and Crime Commissioner since 2012, and is now serving her fourth term in this role. Under her leadership Sussex Police has become one of the top performing police forces in England and Wales for answering emergency calls, she has funded 8 Victim Co-ordinator posts in a ground-breaking unit

                  On Saturday 16th November we had a stall at  Stildon Caew Home’s Christmas Fair. Helen’s incredible crafting and Jane’s cakes helped to raise £80 for our funds. Bridget, President Alison and Gill helped Helen set up, run the stall and pack away.           In November at the Lingfield Nature Reserve several members replanted the tree that had been previously planted in memory  of Anita, and scattered bluebell bulbs under the tree of president Alison’s mother. It is always sad to say farewell to a member of the club but it is good to know that we have a place where we can go to remember them. Several past members now have a memorial to them at the reserve and we hope to soon produce a map to show where each Soroptimist is remembered.At the start of November 14 members

Mr Bates vs The Post Office and Beyond At our late October meeting, East Grinstead Club were delighted to welcome Kay Linnell and Barbara Jeremiah who told about their involvement in one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in British legal history, The Post Office Scandal. The case had been rumbling on for around 19 years and it took a television drama to bring it to the attention of the general public and cause universal outrage. Well over 500 sub-postmasters and postmistresses had been wrongly accused of embezzling huge sums of money, the loss of all of which was due to errors within the Post Office computer system. Some of the accused had lost their homes, their life’s savings, their livelihoods, their health and in some cases their lives. Kay, a forensic accountant together with her business partner Barbara, both of whom are members of