During November club members were very busy organising items and games for the Christmas Fayre in order to raise much needed funds for the Spencer Denny Centre.  Members have been involved with the centre for many years but have now made it more central to the programme action work of the club.  Several members volunteer to assist the Tuesday club and in part the Fayre was a fund raiser to raise more funds for this activity.  The photos illustrate some of the stands selling jewellery, games and books, the bottle stall and, of course, the main guest – Santa Claus himself!  Almost £1000 was raised from the Fayre and a raffle for a hamper of Christmas goodies.

President Margaret, club members and guests enjoyed a wonderful meal in the fabulous surroundings of Ditton Manor on Sunday 27th March when they celebrated the Diamond Anniversary of the club.  Unfortunately a number of guests could not attend due to Covid including International President Maureen Maguire.  However her talk was relayed by Alison Sutherland and a toast was drunk to Soroptimist International. Mr Tan Ikran CBE gave an interesting and informative talk relating to the issue of violence against women which sadly continues to be high on the agenda for Soroptimist International worldwide.  The celebration cake made by club member Jackie was greatly admired.

The club was delighted to get news from Asmita who we are supporting through her studies to become a lawyer at the University of Katmandu.  This year she received the top marks in her course at university.  This is a great achievement.

The club members got together at Fredricks Hotel in Maidenhead to celebrate the Christmas season on Wednesday night.  They also welcomed the CEO of DASH to their dinner.  Each year the club puts together a present for each of the residents of the Refuge and this year there was an additional present for the children to give to their mothers on Christmas Day.  Club members donated the gifts – mostly items such as hand cream, bath foam and such like – and Irene and Marilyn set to and wrapped them. Here is the end result:There was also a raffle which raised £70 for club funds.  The Christmas hamper was one by Marilyn.

Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, Pat Black was able to give a talk to the club at the November meeting from her home in Edinburgh.  Pat is the SI Advocacy Advisor 2020 – 2021 and spends considerable amounts of time working with the SI group in Geneva.  She explained the links between SI and the UN and the importance of having consultative status which interdepends on all clubs keeping their Programme Action Focus Forms up to date! In particular she told us about being  invited recently through National Alliance of Women’s Organisations (NAWO) UK, to attend a virtual consultation with NGOs and the current President of the UN Security Council, His Excellency Sven Jurgenson of Estonia. It was a very interesting meeting attended by about 90 representatives from a wide range of non governmental organisations with consultative status at the UN. The President indicated