President’s message
It is a great honour to welcome you to a new year for the Midland East Region as your new Region President. My theme for this year is ‘Women creating peaceful communities’ and our meetings during the year will reflect this theme. We will be looking at peace globally, nationally and locally, and what we as women can do to play our part in achieving it.
I have just returned from the SIGBI Annual Conference in Cardiff and have come away inspired and awed again by the work that is done by our sister Soroptimists all over our Federation. It was also an opportunity to pay tribute to Lynn Dunning, the Immediate Past President of Soroptimist International who sadly died recently. Immediate Past Federation President Carwen announced a memorial fund to be set up in Lynn’s memory, Loos for Lynn, to enable sanitation to be provided for those parts of the world where clean water is just not available. This has a terrible impact in particular on women and girls, depriving them of opportunities for education and work, and exposing them to danger and disease. Helping to eradicate this problem will certainly be a fitting memorial for Lynn.
And on a similar theme, Federation President Jackie has announced a challenge for this, the 75th Anniversary of the founding of SIGBI. ‘75 for 75′ is a challenge for each club to raise £75 for 75 water projects in partnership with WaterAid. I would encourage clubs to take up this challenge. World Water Day is 22 March 2010 and clubs can arrange a fundraising event around that day - tea parties, lunches, wine tasting - the list of possible fund raising events is endless. And please invite me! I am hoping to get to every club in the Region before the end of my year.
Yours in Soroptimism
Claire