Gosh March has been a busy month for our soroptimist club in Elmbridge.
Early doors – Supporting Hersham FC Ladies Race Night in person, betting to win at the Barley Mow pub and donating two great prizes for the raffle/auction – delighted to hear over £4500 was raised for Princess Alice Hospice well done to the football club members who organised and ran such a worthwhile fun charity event..
International Women’s Day 2026 – advertising the various historical and important aspects of this day of action led by the United Nations on social media to increase public awareness and joined employers, NGOs, charities, soroptimists and the public celebrating all around the globe. Weybridge and District club members joined in, we organised a walk in the park in partnership with #PainshillParkTrust who very kindly enabled concessionary entry and a lovely warm space to relax afterwards. We were joined by over 20 men and women walking and talking to the public and enjoying a cuppa together with locals at the end.
Attending HershamFC girls team training at Coronation REC, Hersham. Another chance to support our community partners this time with a donation for £400 to fund the council green space fees for 2026/7, this sum secured from club night ‘book exchanges’ amongst members and a competition at Oatlands Fair in 2025, every £ makes a difference; the public toilet are open for changing and use and in poor weather when the Desborough Island training ground is waterlogged training continues! Brenda, Paul, Mo & Ann met up at Coronation Rec for a fantastic morning in the sun. We were delighted to see players training on a sunny Saturday and to handover funds from our ‘book exchange’ project to fund the green space fees for toilets and facilities at #coronationrec in Hersham. This gift brings our International Women’s Day activities to celebrate women’s successes to a close. The coaches, leadership and community are incredible enabling women and girls of all ages to train, mentor, compete and keep fit. @SIWeybridge Soroptimists are so fortunate to be able to help again for the year ahead and see such success and teamwork. Lorraine made us very welcome explaining how our support is important. The teams were fun to be with too! £400 will be used to pay next years levy as a raffle raised this years much needed funds quickly whilst we worked to raise our funds.
Now we are preparing for this weeks club meeting where our speaker is Anisa Dhanji, one of the UK based judges who was instrumental in the fight to extricate women judges from Kabul when the Taliban took charge. As usual supper will be followed by valuable conversation, our business and projects review and collecting items for the book exchange and local foodbank.
On the same day March 19th members involved with our club “STEM in schools” projects will be challenged to excel as external judges at the Cobham Free School Year 7&8 Science Competition. Last year with over 115 table top entries and an incredible level of proficiency demonstrated it was a tough job to discern the budding scientists and engineers entries from one another in terms of experimental design, investigations and reporting. It’s such fun to see education in action and the excitement of students for sciences from all corners of the spectrum of topics.
With 48 years under our belt as a local community club and part of a global volunteer movement we are now planning for our 50th anniversary year in 2028 and building even stronger community links to enable, empower and educate women and girls through our Soroptimist Diamond Education Grant and bursaries around the globe.