At our meeting on 20th March Laura Monk the first recipient of our Diamond Engineering Award came to talk to us about her first year doing biomedical engineering and the things that she is now doing in her 2nd year.
The Hertford and District Soroptimists and Friends held a very special speaker meeting on the 6th March,2017 when two Cheques for £550 each were presented to our two chosen charities as a result of an earlier fund-raising quiz. One was presented to Melanie Ewer Development Director and Mike Smith, Centre Director of a local charity Courtyard Arts in Hertford and the other to Julie Whelan Chief Executive of the international charity Nordoff Robbins Music Therapy After supper and before the presentation we heard a moving and enthusiastic talk by Julie Whelan about Nordoff Robbins the amazing charity which transforms lives through music therapy. We saw three clips of this in action and how it could unlock lives in turmoil. One showed the joy of an elderly lady with severe dementia when working with a music therapist. No words were necessary. Their own trained music therapists
The theme of our Speaker meeting on Monday 6th February 2017 continued as Women and the Arts. Our speaker was Clare Gittings who before retirement worked at the National Portrait Gallery for 24 years and chose as her subject “Five centuries of women and their gardens”. It was a most entertaining talk with excellent power point images. Clare ranged widely from aristocratic women who could afford to create exotic gardens and travel as plant collectors to later housewives growing vegetables and fruit and herbs to feed and doctor their households. Many were formidable women who, denied other outlets, turned to gardening for solace,comfort and to use their intelligence. Individual women gardeners mentioned were Bess of Hardwick, Mrs Delaney of paper flower decoration, Daisy Warwick, Vita Sackville-West and Beth Chatto among others. For centuries woman have been important to gardens and gardens important to women. Looking
Our annual prize for Service and Leadership donated to Presdales, our local girls’ school, was awarded jointly to Maddie Lee and Caja Stacey on 19th December 2016 at the school’s Speech Day. The two worthy recipients had spearheaded a successful recycling project. The picture shows member Pam Robertson talking to the girls about the project, their future plans and, of course, Soroptimism.
S.I. Hertford and District held their annual Quiz Night at Wodson Park, Ware, on Friday, 18th November. It was a most enjoyable evening and £1100 was raised for two of the Charities we are supporting this year. The money will be divided between the local Courtyard Arts Centre in Hertford and the national charity, the Nordoff Robbins Music Therapy. The club will work with each charity to decide on a project which will benefit women and children.
At the regional meeting on 15th October Regional President Pam handed on the chain of office, the official handover ceremony being at the SIGBI conference in Malta in November. At our business meeting on 17th October Regional representative Valerie Seddon gave Pam a small token of our thanks for being such a great representative of SI Hertford & District as Regional President.
Our not so frugal supper was held at Jenny’s and was as always a great success.
Thirteen Soroptimists and Friends met together on Monday September 4th for a special evening at Courtyard Arts in Hertford. None of us were budding Picasso,s but as one of our members put it ‘we got stuck in’. We were fortunate enough to have Sue Wagstaff as our tutor and the result was a brilliant evening as she took us through the stages of an artists palette. Apart from an elementary knowledge of the primary colours our knowledge of what paint and colour can do was neglible. We began with great enthusiasm and hilarity to draw and then paint a colour wheel then to produce a shading or tinting chart. We were using acrylic paint but Sue explAined the differences were we to paint in oil or watercolour. An unexpected outcome was that by the end of the evening we had all got to know each
Although SI Hertford & District had no official meetings during August, it didn’t mean we were doing nothing! On Sunday 7th August a few members of the club took to the Kite Festival on Therfield Heath, Royston. It was a windy day, almost too windy for kites, our gazebo almost took to the skies over Royston so we dispensed with that. However, we had a lovely day in the sunshine letting people know about Soroptimism and running a bran tub which raised a little money for our charity fund. Towards the end of August, on Friday 26th, we held a lunch at Karin’s in to raise funds for our Diamond Anniversary Engineering award. Money raised was £252, a great result. More news of the award in the future.
Once Again Anne Miles kindly offered her home and garden for our annual tea party to raise money for Isabel Hospice. Guests and friends gave generously to support The Isabel Hospice. The refreshments were organised by S I. Hertford and District. Everyone enjoyed the delicious tea and apart from a great tea everyone was entertained by the Hertford U3A Ukulele Group. The total raised for the Hospice was just over £500.
