June 2017
Special guest Claire Cohen from Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust gave a very informative presentation to Tamworth Soroptimists.
There were also presentations from Linda Hayes, a member of SI Tamworth and a cervical cytology outreach nurse and Hannah and Jenny, two young women who spoke of their own experience of the disease.
As with all the speakers they emphasised the importance of the smear test.
Questions and answers session followed all the presentations.
Gwyneth Brown, member of the Soroptimists said “Everyone agreed that the evening had been very worthwhile, very important information was imparted in a clear, excellent manner”
The event had been given excellent coverage and great publicity in Tamworth and District and the organising committee all agreed that the event had been very useful to everyone.”
July 2017
The Speaker at our July Business meeting Colin Cartwright from the Rotary club of Tamworth and an Ambassador for the Rotary Club of Wirksworth’s Aquabox charity.
Colin gave an informative talk about the work that Aquabox does.
Aquabox was formed over 25 years ago, at the same time as the United Nations created World Water Day. Since 2012 only in-house Aquabox Golds have been produced.
Each Aquabox contains up to 70 humanitarian aid items to provide shelter, tools, cooking and food service items, personal hygiene items, children’s clothing and bedding, education materials and children’s toys.
For more information please visit their website – www.aquabox.org or Facebook page – www.facebook.com/aquaboxcharity
August 2017
Vicky Vernon,Chris Fulwell,Edna Schafer Hughes and Brenda Frankham provided a gorgeous, sumptuous cream tea which began with Prosecco.
It was a delightful afternoon- a lovely happy occasion and it raised £314 for The Soroptimist International GEMS project.
This is an ongoing project organised by S I Karachi to engage boys in looking at the role of girls in in society and in changing their attitude to girls.
September 2017
Patricia G
atherum visited SI Tamworth in September to speak about the Meru Women’s Garden project. Members from SI Midland Chase also attended the meeting. A cheque for £185 was presented for the Meru Garden project. This was from monies raised from a table top sale at our June Business meeting.
Handicap International
In September SI Tamworth held a successful Harvest supper to raise funds to buy prosthetics to support Handicap International. It was a fun evening with entertainment being provided by Simply Rhona and a raffle.
An exhibition was staged in Tamworth in St Edith’s church on the week of Dec 4th for 2 weeks, raising awareness of the problems and significant injuries caused by landmines. This was coupled with a campaign aimed at getting the use of landmines and such articles of war banned. It was bitterly cold, so members conducted the campaign inside the entrance to the Church. In addition, some members took away campaign sheets to ask friends and family to sign.
Club continued the theme at their monthly dinner when the guest speaker was Kate Moore MBE who gave a very interesting and thought provoking talk on the campaign to ban Landmines.
Kate ,who was awarded her MBE for Services to the Disabled,has been a director of AOAV (Action on Armed Violence) since 2005.This was formerly the UK Arm of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.
Kate brought along the Soroptimist Quilt which was made by Soroptimist members from all over the world who are part of a network called The Chat Liners.
The aim is to communicate and offer support to any member whatever part of the world they live in. Kate also displays the Quilt to promote “Limbs for Life.”
Kate also told her audience of her visit to Japan where there are many Soroptimist clubs and throughout her time there she was never asked “What is a Soroptimist?”!!
October 2017
An interesting talk was given to members about the work of the Starfish project. There is a growing homeless population in Tamworth. A pilot scheme to provide night shelters was run in February 2017 for one month. The project was successful so it will now run throughout the whole winter in 2017/2018.
For more information about the Project please go to:- www.starfishprojecttamworth.com
November 2017
SI Tamworth worked with partner organisations to produce bookmarks with local contact details of organisations that provide help for victims of Domestic Violence. The bookmarks were based on the ‘he loves me…he loves me not’ phrase.
Bookmarks were chosen because they fit in a small space in a hand bag. The SI Club logo and local contact details of useful organisations were included.
A launch took place at a local venue with an invited audience of about 100 people involved in a variety of jobs with different organisations. Each participating partner gave their perspective on the bookmark. 8,000 bookmarks were distributed on the day a further 2,000 were distributed after the event.