About our Club
Croydon Club meets on the 2nd and 4th Thursday of each month (except August) 19:00 for 19:30. Unless otherwise stated, all meetings are held at the Shirley Park Golf Club, Addiscombe Road, Croydon CR0 7LB.
The Croydon Club was chartered in 1927 and currently has a membership of 32 from business, the professions and the voluntary sector.
As Soroptimists we have the opportunity to widen our knowledge on such issues as the environment, social and economic development, education, health, and international understanding to make friends and to develop good working relationships. Within our older, retired membership there is an invaluable wealth of knowledge and expertise and this, combined with the skills of our active members, provides balance and a richness of ideas.
Soroptimist International is divided into four Federations: Europe, The Americas, South West Pacific and Great Britain and Ireland (SIGBI). Croydon Club is part of SIGBI which more or less includes all the former and current Commonwealth countries.
Croydon Club celebrated its 80th birthday in 2007 and is one of the oldest clubs in the organisation. From its inception in 1927 our Club has adopted a specific community project. These have included Light-writer Communicator for the Spastics Society, a guide for Croydon Carers, and clothes and blankets for Croydon Women’s Aid. The Club also responds to urgent appeals and needs, including pillows for St Christopher’s Hospice, kitchen utensils for the Croydon Refuge, clothes for Bosnia, ‘School-in-a-box’ for Pakistan, the UNICEF Born Free From HIV Appeal and Christmas gifts for a primary school in Guyana.
Monies have been raised for many causes including the Royal Marsden Hospital, Trefoil Guild, SIAM Project, NSPCC, the Blind Association, Muscular Dystrophy and Parkinson, Limbs for Life, St Pier’s School for Epilepsy, the Aplastic Anaemia Trust, The Orpheus Centre, the Croydon Neighbourhood Care Association, WaterAid, Croydon Women’s Aid, Book Aid International, a primary school in East Coast Demerara, Guyana, the Croydon Young Carers’ Support Project and various local Croydon organisations . The focus of our fundraising for the period November 2008 to April 2010 will be the Helena Kennedy Foundation.
SI Croydon is represented on local bodies – Croydon Voluntary Action and Volunteers In Action – and at national level. The Club is frequently invited to contribute its views on various aspects of community life.
The core of the SI movement is in Programme Action, which embraces a wide range of activities in which all Clubs participate. Our Programme Action team has organised a seminar on AIDS to create better awareness and to banish the misconceptions about the disease; investigated water pollution and lobbied for safer rail travel. In 2001 a study into the hours worked by schoolchildren in Croydon was completed. Our report “All work and no play?” was featured on BBC2’s Working Lunch as the results of our small survey closely matched those obtained nationally by the TUC. We have also given help to day-care centres and the Darby & Joan Club and supported a mentoring scheme at a local school. For the past six years, we have organised an annual tea party for young carers which is held in the Mayor’s Parlour.
We have recently been in discussion with the Croydon Department for Children, Young People and Learners about an education project they fund for the Young Carers to explore ways that we, as a Club, might be able to contribute to this project.
In 2005-6, the Programme Action team, in partnership with other Croydon-based organisations, established a breakfast club, computer room and library for pupils at the Beterverwagting (BV) Primary School in Guyana. [This project won an Award in 2006.]
For a number of years, as part of our service commitment, we have been supporting the educating of a child in Africa under Plan UK.
In 2006, following the efforts of past president Vilma McKenzie, we were awarded the honour to display the Croydon Council Badge on all our stationery.
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