The help given has included taking the women out shopping, teaching them how to cook meals and make cakes, flower arranging, swimming, and at times being someone to talk to.

Financial help has come from members of the Club who have formed a swimming team and joined the Poole Lions Swimathlon for the last two years. This has enabled us to raise over £8,000 and made a difference to these women in the safe house

Southampton and District have been involved with Ellen Wren House from the very beginning helping to provide funding for the orginal building. We have continued to support this project for over 15 years. A Club member has raised funds by selling paintings, both her own and those of friends at a ‘Garden Gallery’ event once a year.
Another member has raised additional funding with a BBQ in her garden.

Over the years we have provided stair gates, driving lessons, outdoor play equipment, and funding to put a Manager in post. On an annual basis, the Mothers receive a Christmas present of cash and toiletries and clothing items for the children. The Club has also been involved with cleaning and maintenance of an outside courtyard area.

The house is now managed by a Housing Society with funding from Social Services, but our support continues.

To give these meetings a Soroptimist focus for service, it was decided to make things which could be sold raise more funds for chosen charities. The group began by making glove puppets, and then progressed to silk cards. The cards and painted silks are provided by one of our members in memory of her son who sadly died of cancer. To date the group has made over 12,000 which have been sold in aid of Cancer charities. They have also knitted woolly hats for foreign seamen who find the UK very cold.

This service is on-going and provides a great deal of support to the active members of the club

This project became a focus for members of this Club when one of our members, Pamela Kimber who is a loyal and honorary member of RASC met Anna Nawa from Zambia and to put it in her words ‘walked in her shoes to understand how she lived’.

Anna, Zambian by birth, is 35 years of age and a widow with two children aged 5 and 9 is an extension officer for Mwrembeshi Settlement Village, a Christian community just off the main highway to Kafue, Zambia . She is a trustee of the school there with a peripatetic enrolment of 1250 pupils ranging in age from 7-18, many are vulnerable AIDS orphans. Some of the children have so far to travel to get to school that basic housing is provided for them to stay in until their food runs out when they return to their villages to seek more and then they return to the school. Poverty sets not only the agenda but the school curriculum as well.

Anna’s job as an extension officer means that she covers an area on 10 km radius and is responsible for approximately 250 emerging farmers. She advises on cooking, health, marketing, and most of all on water management—that is if there is any water to manage.

As with most African families the extended family descend—Anna’s brothers have died from AIDS so nephews, nieces, Mother aged 72 all live and depend on Anna for their livelihood. Anna was able to buy 10 acres of land several years ago and was growing reasonable crops, maize, soya and brassica, on her land irrigated with water from a borehole.

This is a picture of Anna and her dead crops

Visit by a Member of the Club

Pamela Kimber visited Anna in October 2005 and found that the pump serving Anna’s land and that of 30 other farmers had fallen into the bore hole and was irretrievable and both Anna and the other farmers were waiting for the rains to come so that they could replant the crops. Until the pump is replaced Anna and many others in this area will have to rely on rain fed crops for their food, and their supply of stored maize was diminishing, Annas children were sent to school with just a cup of tea in their tummies. At that time Anna had 1000 small lemon plants growing in plastic sleeves which when they were big enough she would graft onto orange shoots - then she would have orange trees to sell. The loss of water put this project in jeopardy but somehow she managed to get a well dug 15 feet down and with a bucket managed to get sufficient water to keep the plants going.

A sum of £1500 was needed to purchase a new pump, to get it installed and working.

How we Helped

Members of Soroptimist International of Southampton and District with help from the Royal Agriclutural Society of the Commonwealth raised the money and the Zambian Show Society did the work.

the smile on Anna’s face with the pump that had been repaired generating water for irrigating the ground.

Once again Anna is now able to produce the crops so badly needed to feed her extended family and to irrigate the land of the neighbouring farms. It also ensures that projects like the Orange Trees can continue to generate an income.

WHAT NEXT

This is only the beginning of the story. Pamela Kimber has returned to Zambia with a variety of ‘goodies’ including clothing for the children.

While there Pamela was shown the local school where children come from all around. It is not a boarding school but because the children have to travel so far to get there, they ‘board’ until their food runs out and then they return home, get more food and go back to school.

Once again the need for funding was apparent, welfare facilities are in dire need of up-dating as are the facilities for the ‘boarders’. They have no books of any kind.

A quiz night in March raised over £1000.00 for this project, which has been spent on educational materials and decorating the school, and beginning to building  latrines.

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WHAT HAS HAPPENED RECENTLY

Pamela recently received news from Anna that the  village and all the surrounding area has suffered badly from recent floods, so that the crops once again have been destroyed, so we have a feeling that Anna, her family and the school  will need our help for some considerable time.

Contact the Elderly is a national charity, founded in 1965 and made up of numerous small groups around the UK. One Sunday a month volunteers use their cars to take elderly house-bound people on regular visits to host’s homes for tea.

Currently there are five contact groups in Southampton giving service to 40 elderly guests. Members of our Club are amongst the team of volunteers serving as Area Organiser, Group Leader, Drivers, Helpers and Hosts. In addition each December all the members of our Club are involved in organising a Christmas Tea Party which includes singing Christmas Carols for the elderly guests, their drivers and helpers and to which the Mayor or Southampton is a regular guest.

16 September 2008:   Jo Doyle from Southampton University on her work in recruiting overseas students

21 October 2008:       Jane Gulliver from Hampshire Trading Standards talking about the ’scams & cons’ that go on  in the commercial world 

18 November 2008:   This is a business meeting but will include reports from those members that attended the Regional Conference in Barbados. 

7 December 2008:     Contact Tea  -  an annual event where all members of the club host a Christmas Tea for the elderly members in the community who are part of the monthly contact tea meetings. 

16 December 2008: Christmas Function  -  dinner and party games

20 January 2009: To be announced

17 February 2009:   Rosalinda Hardiman of SI Gosport & Fareham - ‘Yet another wave’ (talking about her experiences as a swimmer)

17 March 2009:   Lucy Best  talking about living and working as a limb prosthetist in Laos

21 April 2009: Annual General Meeting

Several members give approximately 4 hours a week to the Red Cross Medical Loans Centre at Bitterne. They issue free items of medical equipment to members of the public aimed at improving their quality of life or to aid their recovery. This service is often a stop-gap between the patient being discharged from hospital and the arrival of Social Services.