Kay Linnell Region President, Cathy Cotteridge SIGBI President, Julie Blackwell Region IPP
I am writing to send you my thanks for electing me to serve as your Regional President for the forthcoming year and to acknowledge the great honour you have done by giving me your confidence and support.
The role of the Region and its officers has changed dramatically over the past few years.
Firstly changes have occurred since the restructure of our Federation (SIGBI) making Clubs direct members of SIGBI and eliminating the formal role and responsibilities of Regions that are now simply a focal point for geographic groups of clubs.
Secondly SIGBI has become a registered charity and certain activities are no longer possible even through its trading arm that was set up to trade and provide an additional income stream and so help reduce the per member capitation fees payable by clubs to SIGBI.
It follows therefore that the role of the Region is to assist clubs in fulfilling their programme action projects, to enable communication, networking, friendship and meetings whilst introducing some financial synergies and coordination and in providing resources to clubs.
At our Regional Officers meeting on 1st. November 2022 we agreed to change the format of our four Regional meetings to facilitate fewer “talking head” presentations and focus efforts on Programme Action projects. I have introduced this year as our over-arching objective – a Regional competition for each club to enter that could be an existing or new project but must involve every member of the club, local community to that club, other organisations and focus on achieving a substantial increase in club membership and recognition in its local community. You can find the details of the PAC competition here I hope that every club in our Region will enter a project and I look forward to seeing their proposals.
We are in a time of change and for SI to survive and thrive we must change the way we do things.
Soroptimist International Southern England region numbers nine clubs:- Bournemouth, Epsom, Poole, Salisbury, Solent East, Surrey Hills, Weybridge, Winchester, Woking
Best wishes,
Kay Linnell, SISE Region President