Soroptimist International GBI

Charitable Appeals

International Projects

Every four years at the International Convention, Soroptimist International adopts an international joint service project which involves all clubs worldwide. During the recent past we have:

• Worked in partnership with the International Committee of the Red Cross on our joint project Limbs for Life. Soroptimists worldwide raised over £1million for the victims of landmines in Afghanistan, Angola and Georgia.
• Helped prevent the spread of AIDS in Thailand by giving young women occupational training and scholarships so that they do not have to enter the commercial sex trade.
• Built eye clinics in Bangladesh in collaboration with Sight Savers to prevent pre-school children going blind
• Helped the poorest women and children in the highlands of Peru
• Provided safe water for many villages in Senegal

Quadrennial Project 2007–2011 - Project SIerra

Project SIerra is a four year partnership between Soroptimist International and Hope and Homes for Children which aims to raise over £1million to transform the lives of some of the most deprived women and children in the world. Launched at the International Convention in Glasgow in 2007, this project was conceived and nominated by the Federation of Great Britain and Ireland and has now been adopted and will be supported by every Club and every member of our international organisation.

Sierra Leone celebrated its first year of peace in over a decade in 2003, but the country still remains devastated by war and faces the challenge of reconstruction. During the country’s bloody ten year war, half a million people were murdered, raped or left with horrific injuries and during the conflict over half the population was made homeless. Ranked as the world’s poorest country, Sierra Leone has the worst child mortality rate in the world. Nearly a third of all children die before their fifth birthday. For women, life expectancy is just 42 years and the rate of deaths of mothers in childbirth is the highest in the world. Three quarters of the population of Sierra Leone are living on less than a dollar a day – below the UN’s agreed poverty line.

Hope and Homes for Children works in Central and Eastern Europe and Africa. They believe that every child deserves to grow up within the love of a family and the security of a home, so they can fulfil their potential. The partnership with Soroptimist International in Project SIerra will:

Project SIerra will help some of the world’s most deprived women and children. By strengthening families at risk of breakdown, helping young people living on the streets return home and empowering vulnerable young mothers, Project SIerra will enable more children to grow up in a caring family environment – giving them the opportunity to fulfil their potential.

• £10 will provide a family with seeds and tools to grow their own food
• £25 will provide a baby care pack
• £100 will feed two families for a month
• £200 will provide the fees, clothing and equipment for a child to go to secondary school for a year
• £250 will help a mother to start her own small business enterprise
• £500 will renovate a family’s home, providing shelter and stability
• £2,500 will pay 30 children’s medical costs for a year

The involvement of every Soroptimist member worldwide working together, will help us achieve our goals for Project SIerra: A Family and a Future.

For more information about how you can support this project visit www.projectSIerra.org

Federation Projects

In the Millennium Street Children Project, members all over the Federation worked to a common theme, but in very different ways:

• For awareness – to discover if there are street children in their local communities. If so, the size of the problem, and what was being done already.
• For advocacy – networking; telling their citizens, NGOs and governments about their research; discussing what can be done, by whom, with whom.
• For action – working as a club, often in partnership with other NGOs, sometimes “hands on work” – in hostels, schools, workshops and clinics – to enhance the lives and future prospects for such children. Perhaps involved with fund-raising to support their local project, or to co-fund another club’s project.

It is through this project work, and the special reporting of it, that Soroptimist International retains its General Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations (ECOSOC).

Golden Jubilee Fellowship - Charity Number 263410

The Golden Jubilee Fellowship, established by the Federation of Great Britain and Ireland in 1970 to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of Soroptimist International, provides grants to assist women seeking to refurbish their skills after employment breaks or to acquire new skills to improve their opportunities of employment and promotion.

The Fellowship, which is advertised widely in the registers available to students in their places of education, operates across all countries of the Federation and any woman domiciled within the boundaries of the Federation is eligible to apply.

Applications are invited by 15 April for the acdemic year beginning the following autumn. Awards are made from the annual income from invested capital and legacies and donations.

Emergency Relief Fund - Charity Number 211231

The Emergency Relief Fund was set up to grant aid for the relief of acute suffering caused by disasters. Soroptimist members, Clubs, Regions, National Associations and Networks are invited to contribute to the fund and they may also request that aid be given for specified emergencies.

Grants would normally be administered by Soroptimists if there is a club in the immediate area or by partner organisations such as UNICEF, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) or Save the Children.

Recent grants include:

£1,000 to Soroptimist International of Europe to aid women and children victims of civil unrest in Kenya.

£2,000 to Koinonia, an NGO in Bangladesh, to build low-cost housing for women and families who lost their homes in cyclone affected areas.

£2,000 to Save the Children to aid women and families affected by the recent cyclone in Burma.

Club Projects

The Assistant Programme Directors propose strategies for working towards the Programme Focus goals. Clubs use these as guides to help them devise their own projects, which are appropriate to their communities and which make the most of the skills of their members.

All clubs regularly complete Programme Focus Report Forms on their service work. The Assistant Programme Directors collate this information, and send reports to the Federation and to SI. This ensures that reports quickly reach our representatives at the UN centres across the world.