Yorkshire Presidents Newsletter July 2022 My apologies for the lateness of the newsletter this month.  I wanted to add in some information from the Jonas weekend and have been a bit busy at the start of the month. June had some real highlights for me and I hope you had some too.  The RCM at Askham Grange Prison was really good, and it was made extra special as we had SI President Maureen Maguire with us for the weekend.   On the Friday some of us joined Maureen for an afternoon tea at The Bridge and on the Sunday Susie W and I took her for a tour of York. Maureen wrote  I will write a formal thank you when I get home but just wanted to say how I appreciate you having me at your regional meeting and the fantastic hospitality I received.   

Imagine my surprise when the first email I received on returning from the wilds of NorthWest Scotland was this: Just a quick email to let you know that my friend Elizabeth Hughes is fundraising for Cancer Research UK, and they’d really appreciate your support. As part of my special 90th year I am running !!! the 3K Race for Life in Harrogate next Sunday. Spare me a thought!….. Elizabeth Of course you all know by now that she did it! – raising a magnificent £750.  

SI Leeds Literary Prize:  Readers’ Choice 2022 I am very happy to report that the SI Leeds Literary Prize 2022 is alive and well. We have had to work to a very tight timescale this year, with a narrow time envelope for writers to submit their entries – amazingly, we received 57 entries within the two week submission timeframe. What is the SI Leeds Literary Prize? For those members who don’t know, we have been running our national biennial Literary Prize for unpublished fiction written by UK-based Black and Asian women since 2012. Now in its sixth edition, we will be awarding the 2022 prize in October (further details to follow). Many previous winners have gone on to publishing success (see our website www.sileedsliteraryprize.com). Why do we need readers? 1st, 2nd and 3rd prizes are awarded by the judges. But we also award the SI

Richmond is now a ‘Toilet Twinned Town’ SI Richmond and Dales is please to report that they have completed their Toilet Twinning campaign. They have now organised 20 toilet twins across all the categories of organisations required by the Toilet Twinning charity.  They have duly confirmed that Richmond is now a ‘Toilet Twinned Town’.   Catterick, Richmond and Colburn Community Library Trust (CRACCL) has agreed to display the official certificate in Richmond Library on behalf of the club.   Jenny Cathcart, who led the project, has presented the certificate to CRACCL Trustee Judith Clark and Chair Sue Young. This has been a long campaign which had to be put on hold during the pandemic.  SIR&DD are very pleased with this achievement, which has enabled twenty communities in Asia, Africa and Latin America to receive their first proper toilet facilities.  This is a significant contribution to health and safety

  It has been a busy month again. I have been to Haworth, Keighley, Halifax, Bradford, Selby, Garforth, Bingley and Wakefield. Plus 2 zoom meetings, the Regional Presidents meeting with SIGBI President Cathy and a communications meeting. I have also been to the 2 PR & Marketing Facebook Lives arranged by Rachel Weinhold held on using Face book and using twitter which were both really useful.  The Yorkshire Conference on Saturday 21st was rearranged and took place on Zoom. Although initially disappointed, it was totally the right decision to move it to a virtual platform, as 57 Soroptimists were registered, of these 31 were from outside of Yorkshire and it would have been difficult for them to attend if we had been face to face.  Feedback has been very positive and the speakers were excellent.  I personally was really pleased with how it went. The

Here are a wealth of resources from the excellent conference held on the morning on 18th May.   ‘It Could Be You’.    Speaker Information  EVA Women’s Aid https://evawomensaid.org.uk/ Office Phone: 01642 490677 or 07525591971 (Monday to Friday 9am-5pm) Email: info@eva.org.uk richinda@eva.org.uk Our office is at: EVA Women’s Aid 86 High Street Redcar TS10 3DL IDAS https://www.idas.org.uk/ By phone North Yorkshire and Barnsley helpline on: 03000 110 110 Sheffield helpline on: 0808 808 2241 By Email email at: info@idas.org.uk UKPAC https://sigbi.org/ukpac/ The UKPAC is a sub-committee of the Federation Programme Action Team, which is a member  of  the management board of  Federation Soroptimist International Great Britain and Ireland (SIGBI) Limited. –  The UK Programme Action Team deals specifically with UK Clubs, their Programme work and UK issues Staying Put  https://stayingput.org.uk/ Email: enquiries@stayingput.org.uk Tel 0808 2800 999 Centre for Women’s Justice  https://www.centreforwomensjustice.org.uk/ Centre for Women’s Justice Oxford House Derbyshire Street Bethnal

Thankyou to Ann and Rita, whose blogs about our RCM are below. Send your blogs about Soroptimist events and activities to: communicationssiyorkshire@gmail.com. Long or short they will be gratefully received. Ann’s blog: This was my first F2F meeting in over two years and I was looking forward to it. It was really nice to see old friends and catch up with their news. The Venue was very good as was the lunch! We sat with two ladies from SI Keighley at lunchtime and had a good chat ,it was interesting to get a different perspective. The speakers were excellent and inspiring they were especially pertinent at the moment with all the turmoil going on worldwide. It was also good to hear of the initiatives that are going on in SI Yorkshire for Ukraine. All in all, it was a lovely day .  Ann Whitewick Rita’s blog: Two

  Life in February has been quiet, with clubs beginning to meet face to face again. I attended a second zoom meeting with Kay Richmond SIGBI Programme Director and other officers this time the focus report forms were discussed.  We were given a useful tool to help work out which of the 5P’s a project belongs to and this will be circulated across the region.  We also had opportunity to look at what makes a good report or not and this seminar has been offered to the Region, we just need to agree a date. Jennie and Pam held their first zoom meeting with Programme Action club officers and we discussed the previous webinar on the quadrennial project and I have fed those discussions back to Kay.   On Saturday I attended the Presidential meeting with Cathy Cottridge, and we spent a lot of time

Welcome to the webpage of Soroptimist International (SI) of Yorkshire, part of a global network of more than 80,000 Soroptimist in 124 countries across the world. Soroptimists work to transform the lives of women and girls through education and empowering and enabling opportunities. We have 20 active clubs in Yorkshire and are the biggest region in the UK. I would like to share a little about myself. I am from Soroptimist International of Selby, and have been a member since 2008. Becoming a Soroptimist is the best thing I have ever done, my only regret is that I didn’t do it sooner. My passion is for the programme action work that we undertake locally, nationally and internationall. It is humbling to know that our actions, however small can make such a difference to women and girls worldwide.   I have been the Programme Action lead at

The next RCM is at the Bridge Hotel and Spa, Walshford, just off the AI near Wetherby. LS22 5HS if you are using a satnav. The RCM will focus on food – Local to Global – with speakers from the Trussel Trust and Mary’s Meals.