Each year, we like to celebrate our Programme Action work with members, friends and guests and hold an annual Programme Action evening to this end.
Three speakers were invited to this year’s event:
1. Aiden Jackson, a young man who has put his energies into raising funds to provide community defibrillators throughout our local area. We had already donated £100.00 towards a defibrillator. Aiden regaled us with stories about some of the fundraising events he has organised. He raised £40.00 on the night with a football card.
2. Laura Bevan, from an organisation called Fortuna Female Society told us about the work they do in supporting local
women mainly through social events but also through the awards ceremony they organise to honour local women. We had been invited to sponsor one of the awards and President Eleanor attended the awards ceremony to present our award.
3. Margaret Baker, Region Ambassador for the Federation Project, Empowering Girls in Nepal. Margaret moved many of us to tears as she related how Philip Holmes CEO of Chora Chori, parent organisation to Empowering Girls in Nepal, had started the charity following the suicide of his first wife and went onto tell us some of the uplifting stories of the young girls trafficked into circuses or brothels, who had been rescued by the charity.
It was a lovely, informal networking evening and the presentations were very well received by members and guests including a number of Soroptimists form nearby Clubs who had joined us for the event. Everyone was made more aware of what we in SI Widnes do as well as what our guest speakers do and it was agreed that we would support Fortuna Female Society and they would support our causes and projects, particularly the Federation project. We were also planning to hold another fundraising event to support Aiden in purchasing more community defibrillators.
