Regional Conference 2008
The theme of this years Regional Conference was – Putting the “I” into “act on”.
The conference was a two day event, the speakers on Saturday focusing on the issues of homelessness and literacy and the speakers on Sunday focussing predominantly on Soroptimism.
The first speakers on Saturday were Gill Brown, CEO Brighter Futures and Linda Thomas CEO, Arch. Their organisations work closely with young people, particularly homeless women. They spoke of the reasons young people become homeless and the support and services they can offer them. For further information about their work please see:-
www.brighter-furtures.org.uk and
www.archnorthstaffs.org.uk
The second speaker was Ian Dixon from the Salvation Army. He spoke of the range of services they offer to meet the needs of homeless people. Services from soup runs, through support groups to providing advice and tailored programmes to meet an individual’s specific needs. For more information on the variety of programmes they provide please see:- www.salvationarmy.org.uk
All the morning speakers left with car loads of food, clothing and toiletries for their organisation.
After a buffet lunch delegates reconvened for a lively discussion on literacy. A diverse panel gave their thoughts and views on topics such as the literacy hour, supporting pupils with a variety of educational needs and how to balance the National Curriculum with extra curriculum activities.
The forum was followed by David Beckwith from Stafford Castle Rotary Club who described how Rotarians go into schools to help with literacy through their Rotary Readers programme.
The final speaker of the day was Hilary Ratcliffe, SIGBI Federation Programme Director who assured us that we are all diamonds making up the tiara of Soroptimist International.
On Sunday we all awoke to snow!
The day began with a short service entitled “Pause for Reflection”, led by Pat Tennant from SI Sutton Coldfield – it was inspiring and set the foundations for an invigorating day.
The first presentation was by Ann Dawson, SIGBI Past Federation President, who spoke of the welcome she had received during her travels as Federation President and how Friendship Links really can help to make a difference to people’s lives.
The second speaker was Carwen Wynne-Howells, SIGBI President Elect on – thoughts for the future. She went on to describe how the words on the Cardiff Opera House – In these stones Horizons sing – can be applied to Soroptimists. The words were written by Wales’ first Woman Poet Laureate. If we replace stones with foundations, horizons with future and sing with celebration or success then we could be describing what we as Soroptimist needs to be doing, especially in 2009, our 75th anniversary. We need to have “Hopeful horizons” and to accentuate the positive. We need to put the ‘O’ of optimism back into Soroptimism remembering that Optima not only means best it can also mean hopeful. We need to mentor one another, respect each other, value one another, just as sisters would hopefully do, if we are to continue to grow and maintain our membership.
Although we have 90 thousand members in 125 countries, people still ask “What is a Soroptimist?” so we need to get out there and show people who we are and what we stand for – we need to accentuate our positives.
After a traditional Sunday lunch, Anne MacDonald spoke about Project Sierra.
The final speaker was Lynn Dunning, Immediate Past International President on the strategic plan and the proposed vision of the future of drawing together all of the four Federations to give us overall joint projects, a wider profile and to spread the message of Soroptimism. She too, spoke of our lack of recognition in the wider world saying that when we are asked “what is a Soroptimist?” we mumble stuff about women’s organisation, the rights of women around the world, justice for women etc or just say the female equivalent of Rotary. However, our vision and mission can be explained in one simple but poignant phrase – we are working towards the empowerment of women and girls through education.
Throughout the weekend there were also presentations by Clubs on their projects.
SI Bilston gave a very entertaining skit on the work of the camel library. This is a mobile library that was set up to improve the literacy rates of members of the nomadic tribes in the north east of Kenya.
SI Sutton Coldfield spoke about their story sacks which they take into schools. These contain books and visual aids to help at story time and they also give out free books much to the joy of the school children.
SI Walsall spoke of their project – the Big Write – in which they organised a competition inviting children to write on a specific topic and had an overwhelming response.
As always all the speakers were thought provoking and interesting. It was chastening to learn how much homelessness we have in Staffordshire and informative to learn how matters of literacy and homelessness can be linked. Carwen Wynne-Howells gave an invigorating and positively inspiring speech making us all want to go out and put the Optimism back into Soroptimism. Lynn Dunning was as inspirational as ever, as she spoke of some quite radical thinking and outlined the challenges and exciting opportunities facing Soroptimist International in the future.
Report by Vanessa Bell, Edna Schäfer-Hughes and Dawn Perry, SI Tamworth