President’s message
Hello
My theme for the year is, ‘We have to be the difference that we want to see.’ I took the theme from Claire Bertschinger who was one of the speakers at the Harrogate Conference.
If you were there then you will remember that Claire Bertschinger is a Swiss advocate for the third world people. She was working as an International Red Cross nurse in Ethiopia during the famine of 1984. She was the central figure of a BBC news report, sent by Michael Buerk and broadcasted on 23 October 1984, which inspired Bob Geldof to put together the Band Aid charity recording.
During those years she ran two feeding centres which could only take in 60 to 70 new children at a time whilst thousands more were in need of food. As a young nurse, she had to decide who would be lucky enough to receive food. Those she couldn’t help had little hope of survival.
Her experiences of the suffering she witnessed and living in the war zones made her look for a philosophy in life which answered her question of Why? It led her to believe that if things were to change then she had to be the difference that she wanted to see.
“Behind every war, every refugee camp, and every famine are the invisible working people no one sees. Not the journalists, who get all the attention, but the nurses, the doctors, the logisticians necessary to try to end the agony of masses of people who were simply born in the wrong place and the wrong time. It was Claire Bertschinger, a nurse for the ICRC, who brought the world’s attention to the starvation in Ethiopia, to the men, women and children who were dying in droves at her feeding centre in Mekele. If not for her, there would be no BBC cameras, no Live Aid, no Bob Geldof, and no outpouring of compassion and camaraderie that restored one’s faith in humanity, if only for a few minutes. Bertschinger’s courage is matched only by her conviction; her tireless effort to comfort the hungry and dying is a beautiful story that needed to be told, and more importantly, needs to be read.” Janine di Giovanni
…as Mahatma Ghandi said “Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.”
We have to be strong advocates for what we believe in and we have to model the way. I believe that belonging to Soroptimist International gives us the platform to bring real meaning to this. We are women, from different professions, ages, races, religions, and cultures but all of us have a social conscience, which is why we joined Soroptimist International.
I look forward to working with you all,
Best,
Isobel