The annual Charter dinner for Soroptimist International Wakefield and District was held at the White Horse, Sharlston on the 27th March 2025. Members enjoyed a delicious meal and quiz followed by presentations and speeches. Pictured are award recipients and attendees on the night. Thanks to the staff at the White Horse for their super service.
At our annual General meeting on the 24th April, Soroptimist International Wakefield and District celebrated a successful year 2024-5, filled with fun and friendship. Not only did we celebrate our achievements in raising money for charity and giving service in our local community we submitted 16 Programme Action Reports on our activities to SIGBI, we gained three new members bringing our total membership to 26 for this year. We also congratulated our longest serving member on her 51 years of service to the cause of championing the rights of women and girls.
A number of Members attended the mayor’s annual charity afternoon tea event to support the Mayor of Wakefield Cllr Darren Byford, his consort Peter Davis and their chosen charity Memory Action Group (MAG), a peer support group for people living with dementia and their carers in Wakefield district. S I Wakefield & District members have always attended the Mayoral annual at home event, and this time it was a fundraising afternoon tea hosted by the Mayor and his consort, who later in the year will be a guest speaker at a Wakefield Club meeting. At the event the members enjoyed the afternoon tea and a very interesting and amusing talk given by Milly Johnson, a well-known author from Barnsley.
Two SI Wakefield and District members volunteered to act as stewards for an event organised by MY Hospitals Charity celebrating 125 years of Pinderfields Hospital on the 7th March 2025. Other members also joined the event which involved a line of over 2,000 people of all ages and backgrounds, holding hands, from Pinderfields Hospital to Wakefield Cathedral. MY Hospitals Charity supports the work of the Mid Yorkshire Teaching NHS Trust which provides care to over half a million people every year across three hospitals sites in Wakefield, Pontefract & Dewsbury and provides vital community services to the local area. The charity raises and allocates funds to projects that elevate the physical and emotional well-being of patients and staff and improve facilities and services across the Trust. This free event was an opportunity to celebrate The Mid Yorkshire Teaching NHS and meet the local businesses and
Two members of the Club volunteered to collect for the Marie Curie organisation this March by taking part in the great Daffodil Appeal. They gave two hours to collect, at Morrison’s Supermarket, Wakefield, wearing yellow outfits and giving out yellow daffodil badges. Many people stopped and chatted and also donated to this very worthwhile organisation. Marie Curie are professional nurses who give hands on respite nursing care to people with terminal illness. They will nurse a person in their own home, sometimes spending as long as nine hours nursing a patient through the night, enabling a family to rest and recover.
For the UN 16 days of activism against Gender based violence campaign in 2024 A poster was designed based on the daily challenges of the 16 Days of Activism to raise awareness. The posters were distributed to all 12 of the Wakefield District Council and 5 of the 6 Community Libraries. Members were invited to visit the local libraries to see the posters in place and chat to staff. This awareness raising campaign led on to a secondary campaign with the SIYAMS bookmarks highlighting safe relationships. Following the libraries receiving the 16 Days Activism Posters SI Wakefield and District were contacted and asked if the ‘Love Me Love Me Not’ bookmarks were available. These, and other bookmarks and safeguarding information were then delivered and distributed to the Wakefield District Libraries. Pictured are two of our members wearing it Orange to highlight the district wide campaign.
Soroptimists joined organisations from across the Wakefield District and beyond to celebrate International Women’s Day at the National Coal Mining Museum for England on Saturday 8th March 2025. The Museum teamed up with We Are Wakefield and Labour Women’s Network to deliver this fantastic event to #AccelerateAction including an afternoon tea and a range of inspiring speakers. At the event £418 was raised for good causes which was presented as a cheque to Wakefield City of Sanctuary to support their work welcoming refugees and asylum seekers.
Members and guests enjoyed an afternoon of tea, scones and quizzing at the, Spring cafe in aid of the care leavers in Wakefield on the 5th October.
Soroptimist International Wakefield and District entered a scarecrow with a historical women theme to the 2024 Walton Scarecrow Festival which took place over the weekend of 14-15 September 2024. Local nurse Nellie Spindler is one of very few women who were killed in service on the frontline of WW1. Her full story is here on the Imperial War Museum website Staff Nurse Nellie Spindler And The Battle Of Passchendaele | IWM. She was from Wakefield and is buried at Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery in Belgium, the only woman among more than 10,000 men. Her gravestone includes the inscription ‘A noble type of good heroic womanhood’. Her scarecrow was placed at 27a School Lane, Walton, just below the village hall and a short distance from our meeting place at St Pauls church.
Wakefield and district Soroptimist summer social this year took the form of a visit to a private garden in Midgley on Thursday 22 August. The Circles garden is an organic and self-sustaining plantswoman’s ½ acre garden on gently sloping site overlooking fields, woods. The garden is designed and maintained by the owner who conducted a tour of her wonderful plot. Proceeds from our visit were donated to the National Garden Scheme and refreshments were provided by St Austin’s Church choir.
