SI Hallamshire
Mental Health is the focus of our Friendship link Club this year and our members and friends have been delighted to get their knitting needles out to knit Twiddlemuffs and Teddy Bears to donate to SI Hallamshire for their project.
A Twiddlemuff is a thick hand muff which has bits and bobs attached to both the inside and out. It is designed to provide a stimulation activity for restless hands of patients with dementia. Twiddlemuffs provide a source of visual, tactile and sensory stimulation at the same time as keeping hands warm and snug.
Using bright coloured wool and a collection of buttons, ribbons and beads the Twiddlemuffs create a fascination for fidgety hands.
We will also be donating our knitted Teddy Bears which will also support dementia patients who frequently like to cuddle baby dolls and Bears.
Toiletries for young girls project 2018
Meeting up with members of SI Hallamshire is a social event we look forward to each year. This year we met up at the National Memorial Arboretum where we visited the Soroptimist plot and caught up over coffee and lunch. We were also delighted to hand over a collection do toiletries for SI Hallamshire’s project which supports a local young girls home.
SI Surulére
Spectacles for village health clinics
Our sisters in Lagos, Nigeria organise annual health clinics in several villages around Lagos. Over 4 years members have collected unwanted bifocal and single vision spectacles to be issued to those with vision problems helped by prescription spectacles.
Once collected they are cleaned and graded. Initially one of members’ husband (an optician) did this for us, subsequently this has been done by Focus Birmingham. We are very thankful to both for their help in ensuring the medical staff in Nigeria are fully prepared in issuing out the glasses.
We have been meeting up with our sisters from Nigeria every year at our Annual Federation Conference to hand over our collection of spectacles. Over the 4 years over 400 spectacles have been donated.
Women’s Skill Centre and Refuge.
One of the organisations the members of SI Surulére support and partner with is Widows. A donation of £1000 was donated to our sister club to help build a women’s Skills Centre and refuge and charity shop (selling the products of some of the women). Our donation helped purchase the bricks to build the centre.
The donation was handed over to members of SI Surulére at the Future African Federation held in Morocco
SI Durban
SI Durban has a long established link with our club. Members were therefore delighted to make a donation of £1000 towards the purchase of books for their school library project.
Whilst we were not able to attend the opening ceremony, one of our members Rosemary Shaw was subsequently not long after the opening able to visit the library and was hosted by SI Durban club members.
