President Sue welcomed members and friends to an informal lunch on Sunday 5th July at the Wycliffe Hotel, Stockport. The food was both delicious and plentiful and a good time was had by all in a relaxed atmosphere.
President Elect Molly welcomed Eliazar Rose as our speaker at the June meeting. Eliazar is the Director of the New Hope Rural Trust in Orissa, India, a charitable foundation which the club has supported for many years. He comes to speak to us whenever he is in the UK and this was his third visit. About 15 years ago, the late Dorothy Mountford saw an appeal in a newspaper from New Hope asking for clean, used tights. It was then a leper colony and the tights were used to secure patients’ dressings, thus enabling the expensive bandages to go further. Dorothy brought this to the club’s attention and ‘the rest is history’. New Hope will help anyone in need and a few years later the club sponsored the building of a 15 bed hospice for HIV positive children at New Hope. Later on we sponsored cataract surgery for the elderly, and most recently
Several Soroptimists, along with women from other service organisations, spent a Saturday this past March assisting Empowerment People with the first ever ‘Being Watched’ Conference for young women at the new Birley Fields campus of Manchester Metropolitan University. Soroptimists were involved with several tasks throughout the day from registration and group leading to dressing up as revolutionary women, as well as President Stella representing the Soroptimists as a ‘VIW’ (Very Important Woman). Here is the official press release: Young women were given the opportunity to influence local politicians on the issues of social media, surveillance and control recently, at a one-day conference in Manchester. Around 30 young women attended the ‘Being Watched’ conference on Saturday 14th March, which was also attended by a number of key regional influencers, including Julie Ward MEP, Judge Marilyn Mornington, and ITV News journalist Fadah Jassem. Three
President Stella welcomed Gerard Curran from the charity Sightsavers, as our speaker at the March meeting. Gerard spoke about the fantastic work Sightsavers is doing, mainly in Africa, to cure preventable blindness. We learned how easy it is to prevent several types of blindness and how Sightsavers are working to educate and equip remote communities on this through community development programmes.
On March 31st President Stella and 8 members were privileged to visit St Mary’s Sexual Assault Referral Centre (SARC). They were shown around by Charlotte Batra, the Training and Development Officer. The facilities there are much improved since the early days of the service that many members remember. There are now three self-contained areas where users can be seen in complete privacy – one of which is exclusively for the use of those under 16 years of age. There are also counselling rooms, offices, a meeting room and a video link room in development. The latter will enable a live link to be established to a court room hearing. This will mean that a victim will be able to give evidence without the fear of meeting the perpetrator. The public areas are beautifully decorated with images representing the four seasons. 2016 will mark the 30th Anniversary of St Mary’s SARC. Having supported the
SI Manchester’s 89th ‘birthday’ was celebrated in style with the Charter Lunch held on March 1st at Chancellor’s Hotel. Honoured guests were The Lord Mayor of Manchester, Councillor Susan Cooley, and her consort and the President of the South Lancashire region, Margaret Baker. Rachel Lappin, the Manager of the Pankhurst Centre, proposed the Toast to Soroptimism and the Speaker was Jayne Bessant, CEO of St Ann’s Hospice.
The snowdrops that members helped to plant last year in Parsonage Gardens in Manchester are now flowering. The initiative was funded by the National Trust to commemorate the centenary of the outbreak of World War 1. Each snowdrop plant has a delicate flower and they were planted in large groups to give the best effect. They will naturalise and return year after year and give much pleasure to the people of Manchester.
President Stella and members were pleased to welcome Lisa Waters as our speaker in February. Lisa is an Independent Sexual Violence Advisor at St Mary’s Sexual Assault Referral Centre (SARC) where she specialises in caring for young people. SI Manchester have supported the centre for many years by supplying toiletries and we funded the ‘Luna’ project with monies raised to celebrate our 80th year, but many of our newer members were not familiar with the work carried out there. Lisa gave us an overview of the services offered and an insight into the work done there, especially in her own field of working with children. A visit to the department will be arranged for members in the near future. President Stella also had the very pleasing task of welcoming two new members to the club, Elaine Loader and Yvonne Healing. The photographs show the President
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
