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Oct to Dec 2024 Update

What have we been doing these last 3 months. 

 

In October, we achieved another 90 Challenge, or to be more accurate 4 x 90 challenges.  360 grams of used stamps were collected from members and friends and donated between the “Against Breast Cancer” charity and the “Macmillan Charity”.  And another bag of stamps has already been started, up to 200 grams which hopefully will grow with all the Chrstmas cards we will receive and we can then in the new year send that off to these two charities who help with vital research and much needed services that benefit women’s health.

Also in October we donated to MK Act a sister bear to our Orange Bear, kindly made by Scottie for them to use on their stall when promoting their services.  Another black sack of clothes and 50 velvet coat hangers were donated to Works For Us to help them better store and display the works clothes they provide to people to help them when they go for job interviews.


It was a delight to sponsor the YMCA Community Lunch this October and we helped serve out the delicious soup.  October was the month for YMCA MK to launch their 2nd Soupfest booklet.   We provided a soup recipe for their first edition and hoepfully we will provide another recipe for their next edition in 2025.  You can see us above handing over a cheque for sponsoring the event and it was lovely to be introduced to Anna Chestnut from the Co-op, who very kindly provided some Co-op goodies we were able to make into hampers to use on our raffle tables for both the Ukraine event on 9 Nov and our raffle table at our Christmas Music event.  Thank you, Anna and the Co-op, your donations helped us, raise much needed funds for our charities.

But it wasn’t all work, we did get to enjoy ourselves.  It was lovely to have an evening out at Milton Keynes Theatre to enjoy the wonderful Chicago musical first performed back in 1975 and based on a 1926 play.  Great music and very toe tapping.

 

 

What a way to kickstart November off, but with a jolly good SIGBI Conference in Edinburgh.  President Ruth Healey set clubs the “90 Challenge” to celebrate our Federations 90th birthday and our projects got mentioned on the big screen and were included in the regional booklet.  You can see Lynne and myself standing next to the banner illustrating what the London and Chiltern Region contributed.  It was inspiring to see the variety and number of clubs who had found many different ways to celebrate and help others, one club even came up with the idea of trying out 90 different cocktails.  But we did learn from other clubs projects and have shared one relating to violence against women to one of our charities it can help.

On our return from Edinburgh, one of the first projects, we completed was the delivery of 50 bags of toiletries to Bridge Academy.  They contacted us because they had heard about our sanitary and toiletries donations to our charities and asked if we could help them.  They work with many young people who don’t have access to basic hygiene supplies and whilst the academy has access to sanitary packs, they often need more basic items like toothbrushes, deodorant, shower gel etc to help those children taken into care or when a family is being moved.  Members made donations and we were able to drop these bags off to the academy in the first week of November.  MK Act, YMCA and Unity MK each received a box of toiletries this month.

On the 9 November the Ukraine Appeal held a Fundraising Concert with Musica Charity Choir to support the work of its Sunshine school providing additional educational support to the Ukrainian children and we agreed to run the raffle table and provide the raffle prizes.  It was an amazing evening and thank you to the Co-op fo their raffle donations and to Jutta Evans for her painting donaton.  £268 was raised on the night.  One of our best ever raffle contributions.  And it was lovely to chat to both Kurshida Mirza, the High Sheriff of Buckinghamshire and our Mayor, Cllr Marie Bradburn at the event.  We were also treated to some beautiful food made by one of the Ukraininan women, the food was out of this world.

Soroptimists Milton Keynes attended the 11 November Remembrance wreath laying ceremony at Milton Keynes Rose and we feel this is an important annual event for us. This Remembrance day, and every day for those women who served and died in war and those women killed in conflicts we shall not forget you, we will always remember.  Thank you to the learners at MK SNAP (Special Needs  Advancement Project) for the beautiful biodegradable wreath they made for us again. They have set a trend.  This year the High Sheriff had a biodegradable wreath too.

November is the month for Xmas Fayres, with our first one taking place on 23 November at MK Snap and our second at the Mead Centre on 30 November in  Newport Pagnell for the Christmas light switch on.   Thank you everyone who helped out and all our crafters for making the beautiful items for sale.  We raised £200 over the 2 events.

 

November is important to Soroptimists because 16 Days of Activism, also known as the UN’s Orange the World Campaign starts on 25 November, International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women and Girls and concludes on 10 December, Human Rights Day.  Soroptimists have a voice on the UN and work to support, raise awareness and take action around this issue – empowering communities with the knowledge needed to help prevent violence before it starts.  SIGIB’s social media theme this year was #PreventionFirst highlighting strategies and key messages to work towards prevention.  As in previous year’s we have used our social media platforms to raise awareness through promoting the SIGBI #PreventionFirst social media campaign and “Voices for Women”, MK Act and the MK Fawcett society shared our social media posts to widen the audience here in Milton Keynes.

This year, again, we supported two important events as well as our monthly Orange Cafe at Dobbies.  On Monday 25 November, during the day we set up our Orange the World stall at Milton Keynes City Council offices at an event to raise awareness with staff about the campaign, the issue of violence against women and to highlight the services that are available.  We were there alongside other agencies including Thames Valley Police, MK Act and SASSMK and we even got the Mayor to give our Orange Bear a hug and wear orange show laces for the rest of the day.   We then took part in the Annual Vigil, we helped to organise.  To learn more click here  The event started at MK Gallery and this year’s speakers were Men, encouraging them to recognise the issues and help to change attitudes and it included one speaker giving a personal account of knowing someone in an abusive relationship and the difficulties of how to help.  It was great to see the sky room full, there were over 100 people there wanting to know more and they walked down to MK Rose and the International Women’s Day Column for a moments contemplation and to make a pledge to do what they can.   The 90 Orange hearts we made were handed out to people as they came into the gallery and at our stall set up to highlight the issues we were able to raise £35 in donations for MK Act.  And we must thank Hotel LaTour, who were lit up in Orange.  The colour orange is used to symbolise a brighter future, free from violence against women and girls. Soroptimists around the world want to get more buildings lit up Orange to raise awareness so thank you Hotel LaTour and we hope you will light up again in orange next year.

November finished with Scottie and I appearing on Stony Radio on Thia’s Friday Community Show at lunch time.  Thank you, Thia, for inviting us.  We had a great time, a few giggles and were able to let people know what our club had been up to this year in supporting our community. Thia also gave us the opportunity to promote our December Music concert.  And the following week, with the help of Viktoryia from Ukraine Appeal Charity  I was interviewed over the phone on the Caz Tricks morning show.

December started with a donation of 90 more velvet hangers to Works for Us.  Another 90-challenge completed.   And courtesy of a friend more bras were sent off to the Small for Us charity helping people here and in Africa.

 

What a great time we had on Saturday 14 December at the Mead Center and our Charity Concert with the wonderful Musica Charity Choir MK performing a beautiful selection of festive songs.  Musica was formed in 2018 and sings in many different styles and genres.  This year one of their highlights was to sing at Stowe Gardens in support of the D Day memorial installation “Standing with Giants”. And I have to say, my personal favorite of the evening was the singing of silent night in German and English.

This was our fourth music event.  And in terms of money raised our best yet.  At our first back in 2021 £450 was donated to the Welfare Team at Unity MK for their homeless residents.  In 2022, over £600 was split between the Ukraine Appeal charity helping Ukrainian refugees just arriving in MK and to our sister club in Krakow who were helping Ukraine refugees arriving there.  Last year Hearts and Music singers performed and raised £700 spilt between the five charities we support.   For 2024 it was our first time of holding the concert in December and we have to say a big thank you to everyone who came, thank you Musica Charity Choir you made the evening a wonderful festive evening and the total raised on the night was £996.50.  I can’t say enough thank you on behalf of our charities.

And we finish 2024 with our Xmas projects.  Firstly, a big than you to our business friend, who wants to remain anonymous but has again donated sweets which we have given out to the charities as part of our Xmas projects.

8 tubs of sweet shop sweets went to MK Act alongside Food vouchers provided to each of the families.  A massive thank you goes to Sally and her team who organized a Breakfast club and raised £700 which has paid for the Food vouchers and extra towards MK Acts summer projects.  Thank you, Sally and your great team.

 

On top of the money we raised at the 9 Nov concert, sweets were delivered to the Ukraine Appeal charity and will be used for the children’s educational camp planned for next year.  For the YMCA supported living residents we made up 30 bags of goodies including food, toiletries, cleaning items and a pack each of the Quality street pouches.

On 17 December, our Xmas present to Unity MK was to provide a buffet for their Xmas disco.  Members provided food donations and we also took along 200 bars of chocolate and another 5  sweet boxes and Haribo sweets.  It was a lovely day, although I realise I am getting old when I did not know half of the songs in the disco bingo, Hey Ho.

 

And last but not least, we are purchasing 3 clothes rails for Works For Us in order that they can display better the works cloths they have donated to them tht they then give to people to help them wehn applying for jobs.

We have worked hard again this year and we look forward to 2025 and what we can do to further help our community.

Wishing friendship and all the best for 2025.  As you can see always busy helping out.  If you like what we do why not join us.  We would love to have more members helping us help our charities and our community.  Just get in contact via soroptimistsmk@gmail.com