Thank you to Broadstone Royal British Legion for use of their lovely club room for our ‘Come and Meet Us’ event on Saturday! We met some really interesting ladies from the local area – many of whom were already active and committed to making a difference and standing up for women and girls.
We welcome any woman who lives or works in Poole, Wimborne, Purbeck and surrounding areas. Join us for a coffee, cake & chat : 11pm – 1pm Saturday 6th September British Legion Tudor Road Broadstone BH18 8AW see you there!
Amazing regional meet up at Salisbury on Saturday 21st. Not actually at Stonehenge but the next best thing! The guest speaker was Tracy Daszkiewicz who led the public health response to the Salisbury Poisonings. Tracy was and is an inspiration!. Visit to the Elizabeth Frink exhibition at Salisbury Musem afterwards a real treat!
We were delighted to welcome Eliza Atyeo last week to talk to us about our local council’s adult social care prevention strategy. Eliza shared with us the data which led to the initiative and shared with us how early intervention can improve outcomes. BCP are very aware of how volunteer and community groups can be such effective contributors to good outcomes and supported us in exploring new pathways. The King’s Head at Wimborne were excellent hosts.
We’re delighted that we’ve recently been able to respond to specific requests from our local Refuge. Our fundraising has facilitated the purchasing of a lending library of self-help books in the office so the support workers can help the residents choose suitable books and keep track of them. In addition we’ve bought several mindfulness colouring books both for children and adults, some pens and crayons and 18 small notebooks – one for each resident- for personal use.
Four club members attended the SIGBI conference in Edinburgh where Fresh Thoughts was shortlisted for the Best Practice Award – ENABLE We were delighted to win the Delegates’ nomination for Best Project and to learn that many clubs want to take Fresh Thoughts on as a local project.
Over 60 people came to our launch of the Fresh Thoughts Booklet in Dorchester at the end of June. With the support of STARS Dorset and the Chair of the Domestic Abuse Forum in Dorset council we reached out to those involved in supporting women survivors of DA. We were fortunate to have excellent speakers including survivors of DA. Many thanks to all involved and to our hosts at Dorchester Community church.
One of the main beneficiaries of our knitting and crocheting efforts is the Kori development project at Taiama in the Kori district of Sierra Leone. See more at https://koridp.org/ The project helps everyone in the community. This is a charity led by S.I. Thames valley, one whose members often comes to Dorset on holiday. We have contributed hats, jumpers and blankets for babies born in the clinic. This incentive has encouraged much larger numbers of women to have their babies in the clinic, meaning safer births and enabling the babies to be vaccinated much earlier than before. We have now begun to knit items for larger babies.
Poole Soroptimists have made Bottle Hats to contribute to the project between Age UK and Innocent: “The innocent big knit”. The picture shows the collection of hats we knitted for the project, our contribution to the 1.5 million hats they received! For every little knitted hat contributed, Innocent donates 25p to Age UK and so far they have raised £2.5 million. Buying a smoothie with a little hat on it is such a fun way of making a donation to Help The Aged!
We know that in some parts of the world, keeping bees can greatly improve the nutrition and finances of poor families. Bees Abroad works to educate and empower bee-keeping, and we are proud to have given £1,600, raised over two years, to a project in Uganda.
