22 Soroptimists from 5 clubs came together on Saturday 20 February, (UN Day of Social Justice) for their regular Zoom Friendship Link meeting. Soroptimists from SI Medway and Maidstone, SI Heswall, SI Le Quesnoy in France, SI Voorburg in The Netherlands, and SI Osnabruck in Germany met to exchange ideas for membership extension and retention, and programme action. Unfortunately, members of SI Accra could not join us on this occasion, but one of our members is staying in Ghana and joined us representing them.
We will be celebrating our 75th Anniversary on 3 June and marking it by doing activities with a ‘75’ theme. one of these is Project Hope, which aims to send 75 cards or letters to women in prisons in Kent, Peterborough, and Surrey as they are unable to have visitors at present and are feeling the isolation so much. SI Heswall were keen to join in and SI Voorburg thought there might be an opportunity for them to do something similar in Holland.
We discussed how the clubs were trying to get new members in these difficult times and all agreed that retention of existing members was equally as important.
SI Osnabruck left us with a smile by showing a photograph of one of their new younger members with her newborn child born this week.
Next month on 8 March as Soroptimists we will all be celebrating International Women’s Day and the theme this year is #ChoosetoChallenge and so we were all proud to hold our hand up to show we are in as from challenge comes change.