The club played host to past Federation President Liz Batten (better known as Morgan-Lewis professionally, but nearly 5 years married so finally using her proper name!). Pam Grosvenor, on the right, introduced her as the club mentor for this year, and that she was here to tell us how to run the club! That was a tall order, so Liz opted for a more informal approach, sharing how others were experimenting as ‘light-touch’ clubs, but still getting the benefits of SI membership: as she said, “if you’re still making a difference to the lives of women and girls, and enjoying what you are doing, then it doesn’t matter if you don’t have all the officers of a club.”
The key to success is ensuring that Programme Action is central to what we do – Liz reminisced about the range of projects we had been involved in across the world, such as water wells in Senegal, the reverse in the draw of the sex trade in Bangkok through the SIAM project, lobbying against land-mines and raising money for Limbs for Life, as well as working with women survivors of war in Project Independence, funding ‘Loos for Lynn’ and now 3Es for midwives and birth attendants in The Gambia. The power of Soroptimist work is that it ranges from the popular issues to those less obvious: domestic violence, trafficking, prostitution, safe travel on railways, rape, even FGM – anything that affects the lives of women and girls.
The 3 main tasks for a ‘light-touch’ club to cover are Programme Action (obviously), keeping in touch with the members (i.e. the role of the Secretary) and managing their money (club Treasurer). These roles can be shared by more than one woman at a time, providing cover by having a buddy, or deputy, and bringing on successors. Other tasks can be run as a group activity, such as planning the programme, and the whole club can take turns at chairing meetings etc. The burden on the Secretary has also been reduced with Federation mailings now fortnightly, with links to the website.
There were various issues and questions raised in a lively debate. One comment, made by a prospective member visiting the club for the first time, was the lack of PR profile of the organisation, which has been a constant problem: Liz admitted that she has an intern soon to start work with her, who will be helping prepare a protocol for clubs to follow as part of a social media strategy for the Federation. Let’s hope this gets our name better known.