The money raised from the Diamond Engineering Award supper will fund our award to a young woman studying Engineering, inaugurated to mark the 60th anniversary of our charter in April 2016. This year intrepid Soroptimists, friends and Regional President Jen ventured to the hills of N. Hertfordshire for supper at Karin’s home.  No-one was lost en route and a number of friends provided great tasting puddings.

  SI Hertford & District once again ventured into the north of our area to spread the word about Soroptimism.  The annual event run by Royston Rotary club is attended by approximately 6,000 people.  Once again a glorious day with enough wind for the kites to fly.  Our team managed to erect the gazebo – eventually –  and had splendid day selling squares on our Treasure Island to find the £40 treasure, raising £232 for Safer Places, our local women’s refuge. .  

Another year and Anne Miles very kindly opened her garden for our annual tea party raising funds for Isabel Hospice Anne writes “It was a lovely afternoon with many more people than I expected so we managed to find just enough chairs and there was hardly a spare patch of grass left! I have just received another £15 which makes the total £700, £550 raised on the day and the rest being donations. Fantastic!!” Sadly our photographer couldn’t attend and no-one thought to take a photo until all the tea-filled guests had departed!

The Royal Academy was formed in 1768 with 34 members, of whom two were women.  It took another 186 years before a third women Academician was appointed! It seems that women artists were smudged out of art history. This illustrated talk attempted to redress the imbalance and show just how talented women were in the art world. Members and guests were treated by member Ann-Marie to such an interesting and refreshing talk, uncovering the hidden talent that women artists through the centuries have shown. Ann-Marie’s passion for the ‘research and capture’ was apparent and we all came away having learned about our female predecessors.

After a very good buffet at The Hertford Club, Members of SI Hertford & District and some friends and supporters, were treated to a fascinating talk by Rebecca Mulhall.  She had spent 2 years teaching in South Korea and gave us a very illuminating talk about South Korea but also the educational system and the hours many children spend ‘being educated’.  As Yvonne Squire, who presented Becky with a small gift, (see below) said in her thanks we had learnt a lot about Korea (North and South) in her short presentation, which we all thoroughly enjoyed.  Rebecca has also been helping, along with some members of the club, a Syrian family in Stevenage learn English as they settle into life in Britain.

On 15th May we presented our 2nd Diamond Engineering Award to student Caroline Nicholls.  Some of us had the opportunity to meet with Caroline and chat over supper. Caroline was welcomed to the meeting and spoke to the group, giving us the following insight into her studies: She has been studying civil engineering at the University of Bath since September 2016. She was studying maths, physics and chemistry as A level subjects and wanted to continue her studies in a branch of these but not as a pure subject. In the first semester, Caroline did a lot of work jointly with architecture students, the ethos behind this being that engineering should work for the good of society; collaboration between architects and engineers would therefore enable this. This semester included completing a design project depicting weightlessness and courses in building the environment, the history and theory of

The 24th April saw almost all the club gather at the Hertford Club for our 2017 AGM.  The meeting was chaired by Anne Miles, club co-ordinator, as the club had run without a President for 2016-2017, the role being carried out by the Executive.  They were congratulated on running a successful year with the theme ‘Women and the Arts’.  The various Club officers gave their reports for the year and there were many thanks to members who were standing down from office after many years service to the club; Pam Jones and Jill Coggins as joint treasurers, Jean Tarling secretary,Valerie Seddon Membership, Pam Jones photographer and Joan Cheeseman Friends correspondent.  The new list of officers will appear shortly on our Club Officers page. Our President for the year 2017 – 2018, Pamela Robertson was duly installed and the chain of office handed from Anne Miles to

Last Monday 3rd April, following a meal together, our club went to discover the treasures of Hertford Museum. Curator Sara Taylor gave us an informative and entertaining talk about the history of Hertford Museum, from its origins as a collection of local treasures and those collected on travels abroad, through its rejuvenation at the turn of this century, to the current thriving and educational hub it is today. We learnt how many volunteers it takes to document and catalogue all the items and how many painstaking hours it takes to clean even a small beaded bag. We then looked around the museum ourselves, where the current temporary exhibition features the villages of Furneux, Stocking and Brent Pelham. Members also enjoyed looking through the variety of cards and items on sale in the museum shop and choosing some of the cards to buy. It was a

Saturday 25th March saw SI Hertford & District hosting what has become our annual Wine and Cheese event to raise money for WaterAid.  As well as consuming cheese and wine, everyone had the opportunity to taste 6 wines (3 white, 3 red) and 6 waters (3 sparkling, 3 still), to win a bottle in the raffle from bleach to wine, of course!  Also to test one’s knowledge with some wine and cheese related quizzes, and still time to catch up with friends old and new.  And the opportunity to offload all that small change that people have been collecting all year.  We raised £633.76  for WaterAid a splendid total and many thanks to everyone who donated.    

SI Hertford & District celebrated International Women’s Day by supporting United Women of Stevenage’s sewing day. Women from different organisations and 20 girls from a local school came together to create kits for the organisation “Days for Girls”, containing washable sanitary towels, knickers, flannel and soap, all packed together in a discreet bag. The room was a flurry of activity as brightly coloured materials were cut and sewn into sanitary towels. Knickers, flannels and soaps had been donated by the school, where the girls were made aware of the plight of so many girls less fortunate than themselves.