SI Sevenoaks Garden Project 2018 to date Supporting Sevenoaks Town Council in South and South East England In Bloom competition and RHS Community Awards Competition   [ formerly Britain In Bloom] UN sustainability development goals:   Goal 3 good health and wellbeing.  Goal four quality education.  Goal 11 sustainable cities and communities.  Goal 13 climate action. Goal17. partnerships to achieve  the goal.  In May 2018 a club member saw a note on a Sevenoaks Vine Park gate seeking support from gardening volunteers for Sevenoaks Town Council’s entries in the In Bloom competitions. Eight club members responded with enthusiasm.  These members, whose total age is 586 years, remain totally committed to the gardening and willing to continue as long as they can. The town council is delighted with this response.  Open Spaces manager Nicholas Cave suggested the restoration of the sensory bed. This bed is now a real

Mission accomplished! SI Sevenoaks did it Target of 100 Trauma Bears achieved! Since the launch of the UKPAC Centenary Trauma Bear challenge knitters in Sevenoaks have been permanently attached to their knitting needles producing Teddies to the extent that the local haberdasher’s shop has run out of stuffing! The shop owner asked the question “is everyone knitting Teddies in Sevenoaks? “ Fortunately supplies are still available online! To date SI Sevenoaks has made 101 bears. Two members, Shirley Brigham has made 55, Linda Larter has made 6 and a friend of SI Sevenoaks, Maureen Clark has made 40. The bears have been given to the West Kent Police Safeguarding Team who are already using them commenting how helpful they are as a de stressor for the children. Bears have been given to the Probation Service, Maidstone for use in Women’s Refuges Word about the Trauma

CLUB REPORT SI SEVENOAKS April 2020-21 This has been the year of Zoom! …which has enabled the Club to function thanks to Penny & Jenny…kept us in touch with Region  ……and which made me think of a Z to A guide for the Club year. Z = Zoom  Y= Year X is for the crosses put on all the ballot papers received from SIGBI W would be for supporting International women’s day by participating in the Close the gender gap movement;  President Penny laying a wreath of poppies on Remembrance Sunday, albeit without the usual ceremony on the Vine; a talk on witchcraft and lobbying letters to our MP on better legislation  to help women victims of abuse. V would be all the voluntary work and a social lunch at the Mount Vineyard café in the short window of time in the Summer when it

Colin Preston of Keyhole Surgery gave us a humorous and informative talk entitled “Breaking and Entering” all about his career as a locksmith providing valuable advice about securing our homes. President Penny had chosen this talk in line with Regional President Lorna Blackmore’s strap line “Secure in the present Secure in the future”.

President Penelope Robbins was invited by Sue Marlow to help members from Arts without Boundaries to “get stuck” into the Arty Farty Lantern Workshop. It was a fun afternoon joined by members from sister club SI Tunbridge Wells. Lanterns of all shapes and sizes were being created for the Winter Lantern Parade taking place on 8th February starting at 5:30pm from 17 Calverley Road Tunbridge Wells. We were delighted to take part in the workshop and in continuing our partnership with Arts without Boundaries please do check out our website for more details of the charity and their Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/artswithoutboundaries.org.uk/ https://sigbi.org/sevenoaks/what-we-do/

This month club members Ann, Pauline, Jenny and Penny had the great pleasure of helping prepare and serve the homemade cream tea, sandwiches and with lots of cake! at Monday Afternooners. What an amazing and inspiring group they are.   Club member Ann HInes explains about the group – Monday Afternooners is a club for adults with physical disabilities, mainly Cerebral Palsy.  It was set up originally by Bromley Scope, but some years ago was included in Bromley Mencap as a much larger organisation. They could offer MA members access to more services. The club meets monthly on the last Monday of the month.  They go on outings, meals out, and speakers or entertainment on the Mondays.  They always meet for outings or use a room at the care home Durham House in Bromley.  One of the members lives in this home, others independently or

We welcomed Sue Marlow of Band without Boundaries to our club meeting on Tuesday 8th October. It was a great pleasure to present Sue with instruments for the band that we had purchased with monies raised from raffles we had held earlier in the year. Band without Boundaries currently meet at Amherst School in Riverhead and borrow their instruments, so we are very pleased to be fundraising for this wonderful band to have their own instruments for practice nights and for various gigs/events that they attend. Please check out our Link to our club page explaining more about the charity https://sigbi.org/sevenoaks/what-we-do/ and their facebook page https://www.facebook.com/artswithoutboundaries.org.uk/

Each year the club chooses to acknowledge 2 UN Days – this year it has been Literacy and Mental Health Awareness. The club held a meeting to discuss issues surrounding mental health and well-being during Mental Health Awareness week in May. Breaking down barriers to Mental Health issues.  To continue this we invited Lucy Adams Community Development Director and Katie Moss of West Kent Mind to speak at our October club meeting on 8th October – this was the nearest date to International Mental Health Day 10th October. Lucy and Katie spoke about the mental health charity and the services, advice and support that they give in the community. They offer counselling, supported housing, Well-being activities and groups, workshops, training and more. Some of the other wonderful work that they do is Mental Health for schools – “Working to equip teachers with knowledge and skills

We were delighted to welcome 2 Girlguides Eleanor Keen and Sruti Rehman from 12th Tonbridge Senior Section and their families to our Sept club meeting. Back in the summer we had help to sponsor them for the London and South East Region (LaSER) international expedition. Sruti took part in the Thailand expedition along with 11 Senior section members and 3 leaders and Eleanor in Mongolia. It was great to hear all the adventures and experiences they both had. Eleanor had volunteered at the Child Smile Hope Centre in Ulaanbaatar supporting the disadvantaged children, organising and running educational activities with the younger children, teaching English to the older children and renovating a school building. Eleanor took part in cultural activities at the weekend and evenings such as sleeping overnight in a traditional gur and met the Mongolian Girl Scouts. Here is Sruti’s account of her expedition

The club held a “Journeys through Literacy” event in celebration of the United Nations Literacy Day 8th September 2019 jointly with Sevenoaks Library in their gallery. https://www.un.org/en/events/literacyday/ The event could just have easily been called from ‘Global to Local’ as the 15 minute presentations covered ‘Literacy in a pre literate society’ working with an indigenous tribe in Brazil given by Margaret Alford and ‘Bloom where you are planted’  an English speaking programme delivered by Sevenoaks Welcomes Refugess to the Syrian refugees living in the Sevenoaks area. We were so pleased to welcome two refugees, a father and daughter who spoke of their experiences and feelings of coping in a new country. ’Success in a turnaround school’ by Sally Quirk Head Teacher St, John’s Primary School, Sevenoaks. This was a story of a failing school which now has a waiting list, and ‘Inclusive Learning that changes lives’