The 91st Soroptimist International Great Britain and Ireland (SIGBI) Federation Conference was brilliant! It was held in Birmingham Friday 31 Oct to Sunday 2 Nov 2025.
About 30 Members of the SI London Chilterns (SILC) Region were among more than 400 Soroptimists who came together for the event.
This blog is about the Conference from the perspective of the SILC Region, and you can read reports from the Conference on the Conference website https://sigbi.org/birmingham2025/
Thursday was the Opening ceremony with the wonderful flag presentation of the 18 member nations of our Federation. There were big cheers for the Jamaican flag in support of sisters affected by the devastating hurricane (funds have been sent to Jamaica from the SIGBI Emergency Relief Fund) and for the newest member nation St Lucia. You can click here for more https://sigbi.org/birmingham2025/friday-31-october-2025-session-blogs/opening-ceremony/
Friday gave us three great speakers tackling the theme of the Conference – Awareness, Advocacy & Action:
First was Suzie Imber – a dazzling British space physicist who scales unconquered mountain peaks in her spare time and funds and runs a programme to encourage girls into STEM – science, technology, engineering and medicine/maths. https://sigbi.org/birmingham2025/friday-31-october-2025-session-blogs/speaker-professor-suzie-imber/
Next was Alison Hitchcock joint founder of the charity ” From Me to You” who told us wonderful stories about the impact of the anonymous letters the charity encourages people to write to cancer sufferers helping to reduce their isolation and bring some normality into their lives. Alison challenged everyone at Conference to take a notelet from the supply provided and to write a letter to a woman going through cancer. https://sigbi.org/birmingham2025/friday-31-october-2025-session-blogs/from-me-to-you-speaker-alison-hitchcock/
The last speaker was Shazia Choudhry, a Professor and expert on European Family & Human Rights Law who described the results of her important research into the lived experience of women in the criminal justice system as a result of domestic abuse. Her research covered five different European countries and the differences between countries were interesting and challenging – the results from France were particularly shocking. There were some good pointers to areas where improvement is needed across the board. https://sigbi.org/birmingham2025/friday-31-october-2025-session-blogs/speaker-shazia-choudhry-the-role-of-human-rights-in-the-family-courts/
Saturday was a day of workshops, 26 in total! They were actually brilliant short presentations on a variety of topics of which members could choose to attend four. There has been great feedback about many of the sessions and especially the one about the fabulous advocacy work being done by Soroptimist volunteers at the seven United Nations centres where the name Soroptimist is very well known and highly respected. One of the workshops was about the SIGBI Charities, including the “Diamond Education Grant” (DEG). Two Members of our Region, Anne Child from SI Thames Valley and Ameeta Sabharwal from SI St Albans & District are Trustees of the DEG https://sigbi.org/what-we-do/our-charities/deg/. The Benevolent Fund has a representative from every Region https://sigbi.org/what-we-do/our-charities/benevolent-fund/. The third charity is the Emergency Relief Fund (ERF) https://sigbi.org/what-we-do/our-charities/emergency-relief-fund/. The Workshop Presentations from the Saturday are on the Hub. Members can just go to the Library and search for Birmingham. Each workshop will be shown in the search results. For the “Speed Networking” Workshop, three of our clubs were selected to present their projects in a table display to talk to anyone who came to their table about their project. SI High Wycombe presented their “Raising Awareness of Dementia” project, SI Milton Keynes presented their “90 for 90” project and SI St Albans presented “Working with St Albans Girls’ School”. Well done to SI High Wycombe, SI Milton Keynes, and SI St Albans.
Sunday morning was SIGBI “Best Practice Awards” which was very inspiring https://sigbi.org/birmingham2025/sunday-2-november-2025-session-blogs/best-practice-awards/
Programme Director Lindsay Green (pictured below on the left) gave an update on the continuing work on Gender Impact Assessments and the Railway Safety Surveys. Following on was a straightforward AGM and then the “Change of Insignia” ceremony. https://sigbi.org/birmingham2025/sunday-2-november-2025-session-blogs/change-of-insignia/
In her upbeat review of her year, outgoing President Ruth Healey was delighted to report, among other things, that whilst membership numbers are still falling in our Federation, the rate of fall has slowed dramatically due in part to better retention of members.
Incoming President Gillie O’Rourke (pictured here second from the right) was keen to say that we are an organisation of members with every member as important as the next. She finished her inspiring speech with these words: “Throughout history, women like our Soroptimists have fought against the odds, rising to prominence in science, politics, literature, business, and activism. They have refused to be silenced, proving time and again that gender is not a limitation but a source of power. So let us continue to celebrate, support, and champion women – today and every day. I am very proud to be working with members to progress all of the amazing work they do in support of women and girls.”
Closer to home, it was lovely to see SI Bedford member Rita Beaumont taking the Regional Presidential chain from SI Hertford’s Kate Belinis, who in her turn became SIGBI President-Elect (pictured above in the centre). Chris Corless from SI Oxford (pictured above second from the left) is the SIGBI Director of Finance, so we now have 2 Regional members on the Federation Board. Kate will become Federation President in two years time. So watch this space!
The 2025 conference confounded expectation, and was truly inspiring and enjoyable – not least because of the networking, having a Region WhatsApp group for conference and socialising as a Region over dinner on the Friday evening.
Please think about joining the Club and Regional party of attendees at next year’s Conference even if you can only manage 1 day. The 2026 Conference is being held in Cardiff on Fri 30- Sat 31 Oct 2026 so put the dates in your diary now!