Photo's: Aarhus Friendship Days 2008

Water Best Practise Award 2009

As you may well know, Soroptimists go for Water, which is the SI/E’s mandate from 2007-2011, which encourages for better management for water resources all over the world. All clubs in Europe and Africa are inspired to initiate different projects in the area of water and sanitation.

During the 19th European Congress of SI/E in Amsterdam one project will be awarded the “Water Best Practise Award 2009”.

For the intended defined guidelines to reach the water Project, read this Newsletter,here.

6 Water projects had been completed before October 1st, 2007. There are 30 projects under The Project Exchange Pool and 32 projects under Unions and Single club in cooperation with Friendship Links that needs assistance. Many of the projects had received sponsorship, but many projects still need your assistance.

Maybe your club has a wonderful idea for a project, but is looking for a partner to assist with money or other recourses to realise the plan? Or your club is ready to offer resources and expertise, and looking for a club with a project that needs your assistance?

The Project Exchange Pool is on the SI/E Website to bring together these requests and offers. Our SI/E President likes to encourage you to become active to support water and sanitation projects. There is so much assistance needed, to overcome poverty and poor health conditions in many countries within our SI /E Federation.

Donated Water-Well, Madagascar

Donated Water-Well by Soroptimist International of Europe -  a Soroptimists Go for Water project 

SIE President’s Letter 3

Dear Soroptimists,

The new Soroptimist year is in full swing. With our European Congress, 2009 will be a particularly exciting year for our Federation. We hope to see many of you in Amsterdam from 10th – 12th July 2009. Read more about it in this issue or go towww.soroptimistsgoforwater.nl.

As many of you already know, Marie Jeanne Bosia has resigned as Editor-in-Chief of The Link after 12 years of loyal service. In honour of Marie Jeanne we uploaded her final Link onto the website. We are grateful for all her hard work and fully appreciate that it has been an enormous and time-consuming task. The production of this December issue has been a joint effort, but I would especially like to thank Christine Cromwell-Ahrens for her tireless efforts to get this edition of The Link produced on time. Christine is also chairing the Working Group set up to investigate ways to improve and modernise The Link.

The Group is highly motivated, and this issue already reflects a new approach to informing the Soroptimists of the European Federation.

At the SI meeting in Windsor, we discussed the Strategic Plan, and in a special letter, I informed the Union Presidents, Single Club Presidents and Governors of the outcome.

The SI Board announced a competition to find a new stylized SI emblem. This led to Recommendation 26, stating that in consultation with the SI Executive Officer, the SI PR Liaison will engage design consultants to develop a corporate identity for the organisation. The Board will set a budgetary limit prior to seeking proposals from professional design specialists. The competing professionals must follow set criteria, and the stylised emblem of the three finalists will be put on the internet so that all Soroptimists can cast their votes. The winning stylised emblem will be approved at the 2009 Board Meeting and presented and implemented during the next SI Convention in Montreal, Canada in August 2011. If someone from our Federation would like to join this competition, please contact SI/E headquarters in Geneva. PR and communications are important priorities in all Federations of Soroptimist International. The current SI/E Board put PR on the top of its policy plan agenda.

Our website www.soroptimisteurope.org has already changed drastically and more changes are to come. The aim is to make the site more user friendly, interactive, eye-catching and interesting. Access to the member area is much easier now. Information from SI/E HQ will be streamlined so you will be able to download more documents.

Along with our newly developed website, BuzzMedia has created several blogs for SI/E:MySpace, Facebook, Vimeo and YouTube. These modern sites will help us attract younger women to our organisation, which, as we know from the survey presented at the Governors’ Meeting in Warsaw, is one of our top priorities.

And finally, I would like to draw your attention to the short English and French video clips on our www.soroptimisteurope.org site. Why not send this link to your friends, colleagues,family and Soroptimist friends to let them see for themselves who we are, what we do and where we are going. You can also catch a glimpse of this year’s Governors’ Meeting in Warsaw with clips that clearly show the cultural richness of which SI/E is so proud. And don’t miss the selection of short interviews from various SI/E members with some personal thoughts on their role as Soroptimists.

We believe these additions will attract a younger audience and demonstrate to the outside world that we are truly vibrant and active! So, please help us achieve this goal and show these videos to as many people as possible.

Dear Soroptimists, you can feel the buzz in our Federation. This is the way forward. We are now showing the outside world that we are an organisation firmly based in the 21st century with a wonderful networking system. Let us share our thoughts and ideas with others, let us be inspired so we can inspire others, let us help other women and support one another and let us mentor young professional women so we can make a difference in achieving true gender equality.

I would like to make this our New Year’s resolution.

My sincere and best wishes to all of you for a peaceful, healthy and happy 2009.

In friendship,

Mariet Verhoef-Cohen

SI/E President

The Link 1/2008-2009 • President’s Letter 3

“No Tolerance of Intolerance” Part I

Key extracts from Mariet Verhoef-Cohen’s opening address at the Friendship Days 2008 in Aarhus, Denmark.

http://www.soroptimisteurope.org

(webclip by Buzzmedia Network)