At our Regional Meeting which was held on Saturday 7th March, and also marked the end of Fairtrade Fortnight, members of all 19 clubs in South Lancashire, went Bananas for Fairtrade, along with thousands of other people, by eating a Fairtrade banana. The world’s biggest banana-eating event took place between noon on 6th and noon on 7th March.

 
Wendy Ross Barker from SI Widnes, registered South Lancashire Region on the on the Fairtrade Website, where over 380,000 campaigners had signed up to the event and a certificate was presented to Regional President Bernadette Platt for the part played by SI South Lancashire, as the region, along with all the other campaigners, munched their was to a world record.

On Sunday 30th November, South Lancashire Region held a “Change of Insignia Lunch” to welcome our new Regional President Bernadette Platt

On a cold and very frost day at the end of November we were all transported back to sunny Barbados where four weeks earlier President Bernadette had received her chain of office from Federation President Carwen Wynn-Howels.

A Steel Band welcomed us and President Carwen was once again with us to re-enact the presentation ceremony and also present IPP Val with her Past President’s badge. There was a very warm and friendly atmosphere and a good time was had by all who attended.

On a very blustery day in April – the members of the South Lancashire team which organised the Ripple Concert in November 2008, attended the Headquarters of United Utilities in Warrington, to hand over a cheque for £2,827 to Michael Knight the Chief Executive of Water Aid North West, being the money raised from the Concert.
From left to right, the photograph shows:
Michael Knight, Val Moss Immediate Past Regional President, Norma Parry Press & Publicity, Wendy Ros-Barker Committee Member, Diana Bailey PR to Michael Knight, Bernadette Platt Regional President, Denise Baldwin Treasurer and Eileen Griffiths Past Regional President.

South Lanachsire Region hosted a Concert at The Theatre Royal in St. Helens on Friday 28th November 2008, which raised the sum of £2,500 for Water Aid.
The idea was formulated at the Glasgow Convention in 2007 as a way of acknowledging the work which Lynn Dunning has done for Soroptimist International the creation of  a “Ripple Effect” in the third world was taken from her closing speech as International President. Knowing of Lynn’s penchant for sanitation it was the obvious choice to make Water Aid the chosen charity for this project and United Utilities were happy to help us.

The concert was a resounding success with a full evening of entertainment from The Wigan Youth Jazz Orchestra and Haydock Male Voice Choir both of whom are award winners in their respective fields. Two very different performances but both first class were enjoyed by the audience present.

A raffle was held in the interval and our thanks must go to Beaverbooks the Jewellers for providing an exquisite gold bracelet as 1st Prize and also to Tyers of St. Helens, Kathleen Beavis of SI Manchester, SI Southport, SI Ramsbottom, SI Oldham and SI Bootle for contributing all the other raffle prizes.

Maureen Walsh from Radio Merseyside and SI Liverpool, hosted the evning in the presence of many distinguised guests including the Mayor of St. Helens and Lynn herslef.

Dear Colleagues,

Thanks to you, more than 375,000 individuals have given their names to UNIFEM to be counted

in the Say NO to Violence against Women campaign, helping to break the silence and give voice

to women and girls who have experienced violence. The 25 November challenge? To deliver one million names to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

on 25 November. Why is it so important? To demonstrate the broad-based international support for making ending

violence against women a top priority. How to beat the challenge? Spread and post UNIFEM’s Say NO Widget -

specially designed for websites: If you have a website, blog or social networking site (for example, Facebook, MySpace),

you can put the Say NO to Violence against Women widget on your page and collect names

for the campaign right on your website. a.. Go to http://rocketxl.com/unifem b.. Click on “Embed” a.. Press the Facebook, MySpace or LiveJournal button (depending on the type of networking site you have), b.. Or “click here to grab code” - the code will be copied to your clipboard and you can paste it on your homepage or organization’s website. That’s it! Now you can collect names and keep track of how many people have said NO on your website. Please Use and Spread the Say NO Widget a.. Organizations and webmasters prominently post the UNIFEM Say NO widget

on your organization’s home page. b.. Use the widget to start a friendly competition among organization members -

offer a prize or recognition and watch the numbers climb. c.. Send to members a “Say NO campaign bulletin” that features the widget tool. d.. Involve young people in the effort - experts in social media, Facebook, MySpace, etc. Because of the technical requirements, the Widget works in the Flash computer language

and not HTML.

The current UNIFEM HTML-based site, www.saynotoviolence.org, continues to run, so please,

make full use of it. Thank you so much for being a key outreach advocate.

Please send feedback or questions to Rita Gibbons (rita.gibbons@unifem.org)

of the UNIFEM Say NO Outreach Team.