Soroptimist International of Winchester held a membership coffee morning at Rick Stein restaurant on the High Street on Thursday 12 May. The Club took advantage of the charity offer from the restaurant to invite volunteers and supporters to enjoy coffee and cake in a friendly atmosphere. Treasurer Julie Blackwell said, ‘It’s a great opportunity for the Club members to talk to visitors about our projects and create awareness of what we do, the more members we have, the more good we can do.’   This is the second time the Club has run this event and the Mayor of Winchester Cllr Vivian Achwal joined the member again and enjoyed meeting everyone and hearing their updates. This was her final week of duties before the Mayor Making for Cllr Derek Green who takes up the role on 18 May. The Club took the opportunity to promote

 Trees Bring a New Lease of Life to the South Downs As the warmth of spring sunshine bathes the South Downs, thousands of new life-giving trees are sprouting up from the soil. It’s been a busy few months because well over 11,000 trees have been planted across the region – on top of 10,000 trees planted during the previous winter. Now the inspiring initiative, called “Trees for The Downs”, is putting out the call for new applications for even more tree planting in 2022. SI Southern England was successful in fulfilling one of those applications by donating £900 to plant 100 trees for the SI centenary. SISE President Julie Blackwell and SI Salisbury member Liz Batten went along to the planting. A hundred trees were planted at Longmoor Military Training Estate, near Liss, as part of a joint initiative with Soroptimist International, a global women’s

  Marvellous Speakers at the March Regional Meeting The region meeting on 19 March was awash with information from our marvellous speakers. They spoke on topics both local, federation and globally. Keynote speaker was Natasha Fletcher, Senior Research officer from the Hampshire OPCC, who work closely with the police, the Crown Prosecution Service, local community safety partnerships and third sector providers to keep our communities safer. Natasha’s team partners with local universities Southampton, Solent, Portsmouth and Winchester in a collaboration where students gain work experience and research opportunities. This works both ways for student and the OPCC and something which we will endeavour to maximize. She spoke about the involvement in a recent call for evidence survey, in their Violence Against Women and Girls project, an opportunity to voice concerns in relation to VAWG. That the OPCC is seeking to tackle the root causes of