This is the last month before the AGM, General Meeting, Federation Meeting and when we all get to meet at the “Your Voice our Future” conference to be held on the fabulous Gold Coast Tweed Heads, on the 3-5 May.
It has been 6 years since we last met, each of you would have received the conference newsletter into your inboxes last week, please read, you will see that we have some exciting guest speakers who will provide thought provoking and interesting ideas over a range of topics, all of which are relevant to our vision and mission.
Conferences are a great time to catch up with old friends, meet new friends, get our creative project juices flowing as you come away invigorated with ideas for your clubs project work. Use the opportunity to connect with other clubs and discuss possible project partnership ideas.
I encourage each of you to attend, every club should endeavour to have one member present in person as your club representative. The AGM and General meeting will only be held in person, so it is important that you have a club representative at this meeting. The Federation meeting and some of the conference will be streamed out to members and guests, there will be a cost involved for this. Please review the conference website page HERE.
Shortly all clubs will receive into their club email account, the AGM agenda, General meeting agenda, Federation meeting agenda, annual reports and supporting documents, the club secretary and president will need to review these documents closely. These will need to be discussed at a club meeting, and the club representative delegated with how she should vote at these meetings.
It is also to be noted that for a club to vote at these meetings, the club needs to be financial. As of writing this report there are still clubs who are unfinancial, the clubs in question should arrange payment ASAP.
March was once again a busy month for myself, it was a privilege to represent members from SISEAP at CSW68. SISEAP’s special consultative status with ECOSOC, enables our organisation to have up to 20 participants at CSW, we do share our tickets with other Federations. This year Soroptimist International was one of the largest delegations at CSW with 98 Soroptimists from across the globe there in person. Once again, this CSW was held as a hybrid event, which enables many Soroptimists who cannot attend in person to be able to participate in a variety of parallel events. I do hope that many of you were able to view some of these parallel events. Attending these events provides you with a new perspective on topics. CSW is very much a learning and sharing experience, everyone comes away with renewed energy for progressing gender equality, and ideas for improving the way in which we implement projects. The agreed conclusions also provide us with recommendations towards closing the gap for 2030. If you wish to read the Soroptimist International statement read HERE. The final agreed conclusions document can be read HERE.
Our membership base continues to grow, with the successful charter of 2 clubs since our last newsletter.
We welcomed SISEAP Sisters Online on the 24th of February, this is truly an international club, with members from across our Federation and we can now add another country Vietnam to our country list. Then on the 24th of March we welcomed members to SI Pearl of the Orient, the 2nd club for Penang. The charter event was attended by SI President Siew Yong Gnanalingam, myself and president elect Joanne Yeoh.
This is the 6th club chartered during my biennium, our organisation has relevance in today’s world and women are eager to join, don’t forget to extend an invitation to every woman you meet.
I hope that our members were able to celebrate Easter and Eid al-Fitr with each other, and I look forward to welcoming all to the conference.
Christine Johnstone
President 2022-2024
Soroptimist International South East Asia Pacific
swppresident2022@siswp.org
