This month we held our sumer branch meeting, which is a more casual occasion of a picnic round one of our members house and we have a theme. For 2024 it was Pink. Pink relates to peace, friendship, nurturing, healthy to name a few. All sentiments Soroptimists take to heart.
For the evning our members dressed up in Pink, provided a picnic with a pink theme and of course we had pink drinks.
At our July meeting our new member Scottie gave us a faboulous presentation about the fundraising and volunteering she does for the Anlung Pi Free school in Cambodia.
Anlung Pi free school was begun to help children who live on the largest dump in Cambodia. It provides free learning in Khmer, English and simple maths. The school was thriving with over 300 pupils until Covid meant no travelling or mixing with others. This had a huge impact on the school as it meant all fundraising came to an end and after a year the charity had ran out of money.
Scottie told us once the covid restrictions were lifted the school and nursery were reopened, but the numbers are down from 300 to under 100 children, because the parents have got used to sending their children out onto the rubbish dumps to earn income. At present, this means the teacher numbers are down to 2 full time and 1 part time from 6 adults and they no longer have a cook. At one time the charity was able to fund cooking and feeding 80 nursery children but sadly until more funding can be brought in this has had to be stopped.
What funding they are raising is paying for the teachers. The charity are trying to rebuild to be able to give these children an opportunity to get away from a life spent on the dumps and to help to give ghem a better future. Scottie tries to go out once a year to help and in order to be able to then come back and tell as many people as possible about the charity and to ask for donations.
At the end of the July branch meeting, members made a donation of £130 towards this charity. But we were so taken by this that we agreed to have a raffle at our summer picnic and were able to raise another £102 that will go a little way to keep the teachers in post.
If you want to learn more about the school and how you can make a donation, please email us on soroptimistsmk@gmail.com.