Members and friends gathered on January 14th to lift their post-Christmas spirits and enjoy a friendly and relaxing lunch at the Wycliffe Villa Hotel. It was, as ever, a very enjoyable occasion and thanks go to Yvonne Mullen for organising it. It also happened to be President Stella’s birthday and this was marked with the gift of a plant and a chorus of ‘Happy Birthday to you’.
President Stella welcomed Gail Heath, CEO of Manchester Women’s Aid, as our speaker at the January meeting. Gail spoke about how Manchester Women’s Aid merged with the Pankhurst Trust last year and the work that is done there. She told us about the services offered to support women both at the Pankhurst centre and in the refuges and about the current financial problems of running these services. Women’s Aid are campaigning to make the use of coercion and control criminalised and have a strategy to move away from having to rely on local authority funding. There was also a presentation by Martin Smedley, CEO of the charity Act4Africa, and member Barbara Blaber who asked if the club would propose the charity’s HEAL (Health, Empowerment and Livelihoods for women in Malawi) project as SIGBI’s next Quadrennial project. Members voted unanimously in support of this, and the bid will be submitted as long as the
Nine members attended the regional council meeting on 22nd November as it was our club’s turn to host the event. One of the duties of this is to ‘brew up’ for the 100+ delegates on arrival and at lunch time. Alongside this we decided to run a cake stall in aid of Handicap International’s ‘Forgotten 10’ campaign. The charity supports the victims of landmines and holds an annual campaign for 10 days from the 1st to the 10th of December to raise awareness of these often forgotten victims. The cakes were very popular and many members of other clubs took away information about the charity.
Members and friends gathered at the Pinewood in Handforth on Sunday 16th November to help Honorary member, Yvonne Mullen, celebrate a very special birthday. Proceedings opened with guests singing ‘Happy Birthday’ as the cake was brought in for Yvonne to cut. President Stella welcomed everyone and then a delicious lunch was served. Our club’s other Honorary Member, Kathleen Beavis, made a short speech after lunch recalling the many years of friendship she has shared with Yvonne and guests raised a glass of champagne for the birthday toast. Immediate Past President Susan presented Yvonne with a Soroptimist rose to plant in her garden to mark the occasion.
President Stella and members welcomed Mary Mallick to the November meeting. Mary is the Chair of Trustees of the Manchester branch of Home Start, which is one of 300 such groups supported by Home Start UK. The aim of Home Start is to give ‘support and friendship for families’. The charity was started 40 years ago by Margaret Harrison, a voluntary youth worker in Leicester, who realised that it was necessary to give support to families as a whole rather than working with children in isolation. Home Start gives a free service to families with children under 5 years of age by matching them with volunteers – each volunteer maintaining continuous contact with a specific family. It is desirable for volunteers to have some parenting skills and appropriate training and support is provided by three professional staff. Currently about 60 families are helped by Home Start Manchester, with referrals coming from a variety
President Stella, members and guests let their hair down at our Friendship Night event on October 18th. The entertainment was provided by ‘Loose Change’,a group of musicians who raise funds for the charity Cancer Research UK. They busk on a regular basis in Wilmslow’s and Chorlton’s shopping centres and take bookings to play at events. They do not take any fees themselves and every penny they raise goes to the charity. They sing and play the pop songs we all grew up with to make you want to sing along, tap your feet or take to the dance floor. As usual for Friendship Night candles were lit for our Friendship Link clubs of Calcutta Downtown, Johannesburg, St Petersburg and Witchita, as well as one for SIGBI and one for Soroptimist International. A delicious cheese and wine supper was served and a raffle held to boost funds for Cancer Research. We were pleased that members
In October members made up 35 children’s backpacks for the charity Mary’s Meals. Each backpack contained school materials (notebook, pencil case, pens, pencils, ruler etc.) clothing items (t-shirt, shorts or skirt and flip-flops) a tennis ball and washing items (towel, soap, toothbrush and toothpaste). Each backpack was labelled to show the intended age and gender of the recipient. Members had been collecting the backpacks and contents for many months and, with many willing helpers, they were all filled within 2 hours. There were also two boxes of extra items that the charity will take and use to ‘top up’ other donated backpacks. The charity will deliver the backpacks to school children at one of their feeding stations at a school in a developing country. Such schools are often very remote with no shops nearby, and families are often too poor to buy school materials even if there were a shop. When Tim Olsen came
Naomi Norton returned to speak to members at the October meeting as she had promised in April. She told us about the International Society of Music Education Conference that she attended in Brazil in July. There she met up with many colleagues in the field of health education who have inspired her throughout the time she has been working on her PhD thesis. As before, she was happy to answer our probing questions about her work.
Several members from SI Manchester attended the tree planting ceremony to celebrate 80 years of SIGBI at the National Memorium Arborethum in Staffordshire. Soroptimists from all over the country attended the event, as did International President Ann Garvie and SIGBI President Margaret Oldroyd. The tree was “planted” by Margaret Oldroyd – it was a symbolic planting as only members of the ground staff are actually allowed to plant trees.
As part of ‘World’s biggest coffee morning’ in aid of Macmillan cancer support, immediate past president Susan hosted several guests for both a coffee morning and evening at her home. The event was very successful and raised £227 for Macmillan.
