SI Kings Lynn Projects
Each Soroptimist International club identifies the needs of its community, then establishes specific projects to address these needs. All our projects relate to one or more of the six Programme Focus Areas: Economic and Social Development, Education, Environment, Health, Human Rights and the Status of Women, and International Goodwill and Understanding.
More information is available in the Our Work pages, where you can read more about the current Programme Focus aims and the Quadrennial Project, supported by all clubs in the Federation.
The projects listed below include some of the local and international issues we research and support in SI Kings Lynn:
The Trafficking of Children and Young Women
The Club’s major project since the year 2004-5 has been the Trafficking of Children and Young Women into the sex trade, domestic servitude and industrial sweatshops.
Since holding a Seminar on “STOP TRAFFICKING: END CHILD EXPLOITATION” in March 2005, members have corresponded with our own and neighbouring MPs, and have held a meeting at Westminster with Mr Henry Bellingham, MP for King’s Lynn and West Norfolk, who has contacted Government Departments on our behalf for information on the current situation in this country. He will be submitting a Parliamentary Question on the subject and it will be interesting to see Ministers’ responses. We plan to meet him again, locally this time, as we are keen to keep pressing forward to raise awareness within Government and call for action.
We are very proud that our club’s ongoing work into Trafficking was recognised at SIGBI’s Annual Conference in October 2005, by a Federation Good Practice Award in the category for Human Rights and the Status of Women.
OTHER PROJECTS:
Our club in King's Lynn supports several other projects:
· THE OLIVE TREE PROJECT – we donate toiletries twice a year to this West Norfolk Women’s Refuge;
· TALKING NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION – each month we check the audio-tapes that they send out to visually-impaired people.
· ALBARACA NURSERY SCHOOL in The Gambia – a few years ago we paid for a kitchen to be built and equipped at the school so that the children could have a proper meal each day. We also bought anti-malarial nets for each family at the school, and now fund their renewal where necessary and the annual chemical-dipping that is necessary to maintain the protection they give.
· ST GABRIEL'S HOSPITAL in Malawi – we became interested in helping this hospital through one of our members who goes out to Malawi to work there as a nurse several times each year.
. PROJECT INDEPENDENCE - we continue to support this project. It is Soroptimist International’s international project whereby “women survivors of war” in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Rwanda are supported while they learn new skills which they use to set up projects to employ other women when they return home.
. SPLASH - we give ongoing support also to SPLASH – the Schools and Police Liaison initiative which helps vulnerable young people in King’s Lynn.