Summary of My Term of Office 2011-2013 Let me begin by citing some popular adages: --Teamwork divides the task and doubles the success. --Teamwork is working together — even when apart. --None of us is as smart as all of us Please allow me to reflect on how these proverbs can be applied to results of my term of office. My main tasks as Federation President have been threefold: I serve as Head of SIE, I am one of the Voting Members at SI level and I assume responsibility for the organization of the SIE Congress, which takes place every four years. For all of these tasks it has been necessary and a joy to work in teams. So let me start with the work as head of SIE. I am deeply grateful and proud of what the SIE Board 2011 to 2013 has accomplished in these past two years – with the help of professional staff at the headquarters in Geneva and under the strong guidance of Executive Director, Anne Simon. Considering the different cultural backgrounds and languages and the different personalities of the board members, not to mention the distance to the HQ in Geneva, this has been a real challenge. As the President of a service organization – that is to say with voluntary members, many of whom work in their respective professions during the day – you cannot make commands about what has to be done, you can only suggest it. When family or private problems arise, the President must of course accept that these take priority. That is why a qualified and committed staff at HQ is absolutely necessary. Ideally, the Executive Director should be the best-informed person in respect to our organization and should be able “to assure the continuity of work throughout changes of Presidential terms”. At the beginning of my term of office I had to hire and introduce a new Executive Director. My predecessor, the late Eliane Lagasse, and my successor, Ulla Madsen, and I jointly decided on Anne Simon, who had held management positions at Price Waterhouse Coopers for a long time. That is to say she came from a successful business company. Anne started with an intensive period of observation. She was strongly engaged in the task force on Strategy and Structure under chair Hafdis Karlsdottir and took part in the overall assessment of SIE and the alignment of the SIE Strategic Plan to SI’s. At the same time she reorganized HQ activities and oversaw the assignment of Board Members and staff members at HQ to the respective goals of the Strategic Plan. All job descriptions for officers at SIE level have been redrafted based on the new Strategic Plan. Suba Uma, our former Programme Executive, worked at HQ for over five years. She was more than a staff member; she was a great advocate for our Soroptimist cause. She produced the excellent monthly Programme News, managed the organization of the Best Practice awards, the Project Matching efforts and updated the Members’ Handbook . She was always in close communication with Unions and Clubs and a perfect SI ambassador wherever she participated in external conferences, such as the Rio + 20 conference last year. Suba left HQ in June to pursue a no doubt brilliant career. You see, much has changed in our internal organization over the past two years, and I am confident that the HQ team is well prepared to continue and expand their excellent work in the future. Now, let me outline, what we have achieved in the field of communications: SIE’s lack of visibility and presence in the media are two issues I have often been queried about and asked to improve. In fact, our organization is well known on the regional level, but considering our enormous achievements and successful projects, we should be better known as “a global voice for women” on national and international levels. One contributing factor to this problem is the wide diversity of our projects. Although all of them valuable and precious, being engaged in so many different areas makes “branding” of our organization in line with a streamlined set of goals difficult. Yet over the past two years progress has been made: externally via successfully lobbying and internally via improved use of different communication channels. Let me give you some examples: SIE has excellent Soroptimists engaged in advocacy at the various UN centres in Rome, Vienna, Paris, and Nairobi. In 2011 we were granted our own ECOSOC United Nations Consultative status and since then we have been able to send a larger delegation to UN conferences, which we have been able to extend to the other Federations as well. It was a delight for me to hear how much Soroptimist International is appreciated in the context of the UN in New York, where nobody needs to explain who we are. On the contrary, we are recognized as a women’s service organization whose delegates lobby intensively and whose members are personally involved in their projects. In 2012 SI organized one of the side events of CSW (Commission on the status of Women) – under the title “ Empowering Rural Women”. Together with my colleagues from SI Nigeria Chinwe Mbah and Jeannie Sandoval from the Philippines, I spoke on “Women and their role in making healthy food choices and being responsible consumers”. Here again our common success was also due to excellent teamwork among the 42 Soroptimists in our delegation. This year we were a large group at the CSW as well, which included my successor Ulla Madsen and ED Anne Simon for the first time. Our Soroptimist lobbying culminated in a contribution to the final declaration of CSW. In addition to the lobbying at the UN, our representatives at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, at the OSCE in Vienna and of the EWL have made their mark in the work of the NGOs at these organisations. We have the highest status at the CoE, our representative Francoise Ferey is actively engaged in the Conference of International Non-governmental organisations, in which civil society can play an institutional role addressing major topics such as: Democracy, Social Cohesion and Global Challenges. Among other civil society members, SIE actively contributes to the decision-making process at the Council. We have continuously made progress in being more visible as agents of necessary changes in society. Our long-term commitment for the women and girls of Moldava with the great input of the Soroptimists of Norway has its effects. Violetta Binescu from Moldova spoke at the CSW about violence against women. You can talk to her, as she is with us at this Congress. In addition to our external lobbying efforts, communication is the “sine qua non” of lively interaction within an international network like ours. This is why I introduced for example a monthly letter to all Governors, Union and Single Clubs Presidents. I informed the officers on important matters of our federation, and also commented on crucial, women-related events in our global society, on trends and developments. Parallel to this I published messages – some of them as videos – for our SIE website, which are also directed to the non-Soroptimist world. Adopting new media and experimenting with new ways of communication have always been important to me. I use my Facebook account to disseminate information on three topics: SIE, Water and Food and the Congress and receive constant feedback throughout the Soroptimist and non-Soroptimist world. Our official Federation publication, THE LINK, is a magazine we can be proud of. Its professionally edited content and excellent graphic design are the result of Editor Christine Cromwell-Ahrens’ untiring efforts to promote our Federation. I have used The Link,as the best showcase for the media, for sponsors and for other NGOs. The Link also demonstrates how beneficial a close collaboration between SIE and HQ can be: Twelve articles were either written in partnership with or by HQ members. Independently of this concrete communication work, the Task Force on Communication produced a communication model in direct line with the Strategic Plan and its five goals. The restructuring of our website and feeding it with precise and useful information are an on-going process with a gigantic input in time and energy from HQ and Task Force Chair Gerda Huisman. The new system allows much better information on members. Communication across Unions and clubs is easily possible via the website, and it also facilitates the work of Board Members. Scholarship Chair Annabeth Studer was the initiator behind the newly introduced database on scholarships. This will provide precise information for Unions and Clubs and allows us to follow up on the grantees, monitor the accomplishment of their studies, and see their reporting. Offering scholarships is an excellent means to attract young women to our organization. The mentoring programme, first introduced in Germany in 2003, has been expanded to the European Federation with participants from Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg and Sweden and has been a big success. It is designed to assist young women in their life and career planning. With the European Mentoring Programme, SIE offers its own network of professional women to promote the younger generation of women and makes an important contribution to leadership and to ensuring gender equality in our society – perfectly in line with the long-term SI-theme, Educate to Lead. There is a constant need for training, and both Soroptimists and HQ staff members have conducted these sessions. Suba Uma updated the Training Manual and started to draft a training guide. Anne Simon has just worked out a Power Point for training, which is extremely helpful when visiting Clubs and Unions. I am proud and happy to report that we will have chartered 34 new clubs by the end of my term: eleven in the first year and 23 in the second year of the biennium. This is an indication of our movement’s vitality. We have another ten in the pipeline for the biennium 2013-15. I am sure that this great result is at least in part due to the tireless recruiting efforts by Soroptimists, many of whom have worked as godmothers and continue to follow the new clubs. But I would like to cite in particular the outstanding work of Extension Chair Maria Luisa Frosio and her team. They have motivated, inspired and fostered fledgling clubs with great energy and dedication. Last year I presented the charters to clubs in Tarsus Selale, Turkey, Gstaad, Switzerland, Niscemi and Modica, Italy, Wroclav, Poland, and Witten-Herdecke, Germany. The latest club to be chartered is the one who packed the 2 000 hearts for your welcome package and brought them to Berlin. They also introduced the Fasten project which means that once a month you should renounce to something. I have been especially impressed by the excellent education, self-assertiveness, enthusiasm and open-mindedness of these new members.Our future lies with these young ladies who have high expectations of our organization. They want to know what Soroptimist membership can offer them. They hope to forge professional connections and participate in interesting monthly meetings each month with lectures of a high standard. And they want to take part in meaningful activities and projects, which serve a sustainable cause. It is our duty to involve them right from the beginning. I thoroughly enjoyed being able to participate in many anniversaries and other Soroptimist events and giving speeches on a range of subjects as “the Joy of Eating well and ageing well” in Cyprus, and on “Multiculturalism and Human Life” in Izmir. I found that attending Annual Meetings was an efficient way of gaining a good overview of Union activities. I did so in Switzerland, Germany and Italy last year and this year I went to France, Turkey, Spain, Norway and Germany. At the Nordic Meeting in Lulea last year I gave a training on “How to deal with the Media”. This year I spoke on “Soroptimist and the way forward” at the Annual Meeting of the Union of Norway in Harstad. Progress is being made with the Future African Federation. There was a Central and West African Meeting in Abidjan with a strong SIE participation. We are working in close cooperation with the Federation of GBI and the African Task Force. There will be a Northern and Southern African Meeting in November in Tunisia. And there will be a SI ALL AFRICA CONFERENCE IN PRETORIA, SOUTH AFRICA FROM 20 – 22 MARCH 2014. In the context of our engagement for Africa we are proud that Vice-president Asha Abdulrahman from Nairobi was elected a steering committee member for Africa of the Woman for Water partnership. Now let me have a quick glance at my commitment to SI In August 2012 I participated in the SI Board Meeting in Cambridge together with the two other voting members, Past President Eliane and President Elect Ulla Madseb and consultants Finance Controller Hafdis Karlsdottir and C&BL Chair Elisabetta de Franciscis and ED Anne Simon. Following the decision of the SI Board at the Meeting in Cambridge in August 2012 to engage in greater governance and liability protection of its members, many discussions have taken place and there have been intensive exchanges with SI, within SIE at Board level, with the C&BL committee, the Task Force on structure and between other Federations. Several options were studied in-depth regarding incorporation and charitable status.(this part has to be updated after the GM) SIE decided not to go for charitable status but to pursue ways to be protected regarding liability. SIE’s commitment in the context of water and Food has thrilled me. Tomorrow, I will share with you some impressions of the huge number of Water and Food projects which, dear Soroptimists, you have initiated and executed. I would first like to recognize the many achievements during Past President Mariet’s term and thank her for initiating the water theme in 2007. In the meantime, she has become a real water expert. Last year she did excellent lobby work at the Water Forum in Marseille together with Suba Uma, the French Union and the club of Marseille. And now for the last point of my term of office: the 20th SIE congress. I need not tell you that this was a very important and enormous effort. I have to thank the congress team who spent endless hours organizing this Congress. I would like to thank all Soroptimists who helped in manifold ways. I am deeply grateful to the Chair of this Congress, Heide Ibach. She has been a true gift of heaven to me! Such a mammoth undertaking is only possible in teamwork. And there I come back to the adages cited at the beginning of my speech, which have proved to be so true for my biennium: Teamwork divides the task and doubles the success. Teamwork is working together — even when apart. None of us is as smart as all of us Thank you so very much! SIE-President 2011-2013
Posted on: Thu, 01 Aug 2013 20:05:36 +0000
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