Day of Action 2020

This year’s Soroptimist Day of Action on 18th July gives us the opportunityto reflect on the causes we have been able to support during COVID-19.

International

World Health Organisation

A donation to the UN Covid-Solidarity fund for WHO.

Kori Development Project, Sierra Leone

Our link with Kori in Sierra Leone supports women’s education and economic empowerment. During the Ebola crisis some years ago, the most serious issue was not Ebola itself, but that the process of lockdown led to starvation. With COVID we sent money to Kori to buy rice. As before, the rice went to the cases with the greatest need first. Distribution was done less than two weeks after our first discussion, thereby reaching vulnerable people as early as possible to prevent starvation.

Many ladies (SI members and others) spent much of their enforced time at home knitting extra baby clothes and blankets for Kori, and one of our stalwart members continues to sew all the additional squares together. Here is a small selection from the many knitted items we regularly sent to Kori – eleven blankets, two cardigans and four bonnets.

Now on their way to Sierra Leone, these classroom slates are part of the latest shipment to the Kori Development Project, supported by SI Thames Valley. They will be distributed to the schools in the Taiama area where the founder of the Kori project Rose Simbo, a member of SI Thames Valley, went to school herself.

The charity Clean Conscience has worked with the Kori Project before, by donating hard soap made into noodles that the ladies then form into new bars of soap to sell. Originally this comes from half used toiletries donated by hotels, which are then repurposed by Clean Conscience. Now one hotel has donated more than 230 small black trays. These are magically transformed into chalk boards for the children to write on by sanding the trays, then painting their underside with blackboard paint. 1500 pieces of chalk are going too – and 150 board cleaners – brilliantly produced from torn up towels! This blackboard project shows how we try to reuse things as much as possible, from the original trays, to the cleaners made from towels.

Donated goods regularly come from Flackwell Heath, Reading, Langley, Kent, Essex, Nottinghamshire, Surrey, Dorset, Buckinghamshire and several locations in Maidenhead – all items which are not readily available in Sierra Leono. It takes months to gather and pack all the goods in boxes and suitcases. Then a well-organised team pack them into a container for shipping to Sierra Leone.

There, another well-organised team will receive the shipment in Freetown, store it and then gradually get the goods moved nearly 90 miles inland to Taiama.

The latest shipment included over twenty large tables for use in two of the schools we are refurbishing. The tables here are in transit to the shipping container.

SI Thames Valley regularly co-ordinates the many contributions made by Soroptimist clubs in SIGBI, and other supporters, to the Project and thank you all so much!

National

Breast Cancer Now

As supporters of this research and care charity, with a particular interest in its Tissue Bank, we were pleased to be able to send a donation following our 2020 AGM.

Local

Wycombe Women’s Aid

We have supported this charity over many years with regular donations of toiletries and other necessities. Since March, we have been unable to deliver these items, so made a cash donation following our AGM. Their outreach and counselling teams, and the refuge team itself, are working from home. In July, we made a further donation for the purchase of garden play equipment for the children to use.

Recently, Waitrose High Wycombe has responded to our club’s request to have WWAID as one of the three charities to benefit from their shop collection. They had agreed to do this just at lockdown – so they gave a third of the monies for May to each charity from their Community Matters programme. On behalf of WWAID, club member Peggy Simson of Soroptimist International Thames Valley collected a cheque for £333 kindly donated by Waitrose.

Note the full antivirus measures by Peggy which may be of historical interest in the future – let’s hope so!

Club members

During lockdown, we have supported club members who are shielding, and other vulnerable people locally. This has included gardening, shopping, collecting prescriptions, phoning people who are alone, making face coverings, and laundry bags for staff at a local care home. Through Berkshire Vision, one member makes befriending calls to visually impaired people; another does Bereavement Listening for a local hospice and others, normally face to face but by phone during lockdown.

As a club, we keep in regular informal phone or email contact. We managed to have 10 out of 15 members log on for our very good AGM via Zoom, and meetings continue in this way.