The Mayoress Visits Club Meeting – In her very busy schedule, we were really pleased that the Mayoress of Halton was able to accept an invitation to our October Club Business Meeting. As we worked through the agenda, she showed great interest in our project work and in turn she told us about the work she and the Mayor were doing to support ‘The Halton Foundation’ a great local project to provide bursaries for young people who need help to go into or continue with further education – something that really resonated with us as Soroptimists. The Club has now agreed to support this project as part of our ‘Operation Christmas 2024 Appeal’.   The Mayoress was impressed with our Mastectomy Cushion/Drain-Bag project and very interested in the women we were supporting through our ‘Lend With Care’ project. BINGO Fundraiser Following the success of our

Teddy Tombola 2024 Runcorn/Frodsham Soroptimists have been running a ‘Teddy Tombola’ stall at the ‘Festival in the Park’ Frodsham since 2009, raising funds for our local Hospice. The Festival is staged by partners ‘Rotary’ as part of the community voluntary sector for the Festival. Throughout the year all club members collect Teddies and Soft toys for the Teddy Tombola Event, these are washed ready for the stall – pictured here Teddies hanging out to dry. Members of the club man the stall throughout the day. Our club runs the Tombola in aid of our local hospice ‘Halton Haven’.   Here are the teddies waiting to be numbered ready to go to Festival in The Park in Frodsham the next day, and getting excited about being on the #Soroptimist Tombola stall raising funds for Halton Haven Every number is a winner, and the teddies are wondering

 Celebrating 90 years of Soroptimist International Great Britain and Ireland -#90for90 Another batch of cushions waiting to be packed ready for the Breast Care Units But before that we wanted to record that we have so far this year made and donated 90 cushions to our local breast care units.

Garden Party On Sunday 30th June we held our annual Garden Party - Special thanks to Karen Tong OBE and Ken for hosting this super event, and to Sandra for organising. . Despite it being a bit chilly, we had a really good time - grateful thanks to Ken for spending all morning erecting 2 x Marquees, big enough for us all to sit in comfort, enjoying each other’s company, good food and - the odd glass of wine. Ken had organised some garden games and we had a lot of fun playing putting, horseshoe pitching (Very difficult) and a great knock out competition of Boules. As always there was a super raffle – we were really pleased to raise £275 to help with our project work. As you see lots of photos were taken by members - Please see below and click to enlarge.

Fairtrade Picnic - Women's Empowerment through Agriculture and Trad The first event in our new club year 2024/25 was our Fairtrade Picnic. This was held at the Arts Centre in Castle Park, Frodsham on 15th May this year, and was a really enjoyable event. All members were asked to bring a 'Picnic Tea' which included items of Fairtrade and/or local produce, and members brought many interesting items. Sue and Clare led the event and  prepared a presentation showing the work of 8 women Farmers/Producers from around the world - pen portraits telling of their work and successes. Four of these women worked with Fairtrade, and four women with Lend with Care. Members took the parts of these Farmers and told their stories -  we all discussed the problems they faced and celebrated their successes. Supporting Lend with Care is our new project this year, we

Cheers to us!! At our AGM last week, we drank a toast to ourselves – even though it was only tea/coffee! Well done us - the last year went really well we achieved all we set out to do in our programme for the year. The chair, on behalf of the club, thanked the officers for their reports. Special thanks were given to Sandra Jones who is standing down as Treasurer after ten years of service in the role, and who has dealt with many challenges and changes to banking with tenacity, efficiency and patience. We have good succession planning for our club to work Flexibly - this works so well for us. Our three essential officers are in place, volunteers to chair and note take at each meeting, projects and events planned and all members signed up to plan and organise them Club year

International Friendship Soroptimist club Chester invited members from our club to a meeting to speak about our Mastectomy Cushion project. The aim of the meeting was to bring together Soroptimists from across Cheshire North Wales & Wirral Region to meet six visitors on a Grant of Friendship from SI Phnom Penh, Cambodia. President Wendy gave us all a very warm welcome, we felt very much at home. They had arranged it so that 2 of the Cambodian Soroptimists were on each table, so we all had a chance to meet them and chat. The first speaker was Glenys from SI Heswall, talking about the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). CSW was founded in 1948. It gathers information on women's lived experience. Implementation of the SDGs is key. A lot of data is needed, and it's important to involve men and boys in

International Women's Day 8th March 2024 Club members were invited by Halton Borough Council Registration services to Runcorn Town Hall to be present at the opening by the Worshipful the Mayor of Halton Cllr. Valerie Hill of the Preece Suite, which has been named after one our club founder members Miss Muriel Preece MBE Muriel Jessie Preece was the first women to chair the Runcorn Urban District Council in 1961. Much interest was shown in finding out about Muriel Preece, so the club was able to share some of the club archive material with the Registration Service, and Runcorn & District Historical Society – they will also learn more about the other amazing women who preceded us.

Club Quiz Fundraiser We held our first BIG Fundraiser of the year at Runcorn Golf club and raised over £700 for our project work this year. Please click our  Fundraising Flyer  to read more about our Projects. Thanks to all our Supporters for coming along to this ‘Good Fun Quiz’ the room was full to bursting. Thanks to Simon Chesterson our Amazing Quiz - master and to Sue and staff of Runcorn Golf Club for all their help in making this evening so special. Thanks once again to member Karen and her team for organizing this successful annual event. Congratulations to the winning Team 'The Undecided' and The 'Widnesians' who came second. Please see photos of the evening - click on photos to enlarge

Club Members learn Braille Supporting and volunteering for projects connected with Vision / Eyesight would appear to be a thread that has run through the club since 1948. In June 1948 just over a year after the club was founded, the then Club President Miss Muriel Preece received a letter from the secretary to the Chief Librarian at the National Library for the Blind in Manchester asking for help. Without any hesitation the members decided to respond and immediately invited someone to come and speak to them at their July Social Meeting. No one was available at such short notice so without more ado they cancelled their social meeting and took themselves off on a train to Manchester to visit the library for themselves. The outcome of this visit was that the library promised that an instructor would come across from Manchester to give members