Dr Safeeya Mo­hammed

guardian.wemagazine@gmail.com

Sorop­ti­mist In­ter­na­tion­al New­town Trinidad (SI New­town) was es­tab­lished in No­vem­ber 2010 as a vol­un­teer or­gan­i­sa­tion of pro­fes­sion­al women, all work­ing to­geth­er to im­prove the lives of women and girls in our com­mu­ni­ty.

SI New­town is con­tin­u­ous­ly en­gaged in projects aimed at pro­vid­ing women and girls with re­sources and op­por­tu­ni­ties to achieve their full po­ten­tial and the pro­ceeds from the fundrais­ers fu­el these projects.

“Com­ing out of the pan­dem­ic last year we re­alised that the brunch con­cept was an emerg­ing trend glob­al­ly and so we de­cid­ed to cap­i­talise on that for fundrais­ing pur­pos­es,” says Maris­sa Bubb, pres­i­dent, SI New­town Trinidad.

“Our club has, in our first three years, host­ed so­cial mix­ers to get like-mind­ed peo­ple to­geth­er while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly rais­ing funds for our projects. We thought that a brunch would be a nice way to get back to those ori­gins,” and from that, SI New­town Trinidad’s Boozy Brunch fundrais­er was launched.

Pa­trons were greet­ed at the door with com­pli­men­ta­ry San­gria cock­tails and dined on a tasty menu of both break­fast and lunch items. The event al­so gave the women from sis­ter Sorop­ti­mist clubs across Trinidad, friends and guests a chance to net­work, so­cialise and win door prizes. Af­ter brunch came the fes­tiv­i­ties, where the dance floor was cleared and the pa­trons en­joyed the mu­si­cal se­lec­tions of a pop­u­lar lo­cal DJ.

RISE! To meet the Chal­lenge

One project that ben­e­fit­ed from Boozy Brunch fundrais­er was the SI New­town “RISE! to meet the Chal­lenge”–Breast Can­cer Aware­ness Cam­paign which tack­led the stig­ma at­tached to mam­mo­grams–an ear­ly de­tec­tion mech­a­nism that is proven to save lives. The club si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly launched an ag­gres­sive so­cial me­dia cam­paign to ed­u­cate women on the im­por­tance of ear­ly de­tec­tion and screen­ing.

The cam­paign con­sist­ed of mul­ti­ple videos fo­cused on the sto­ries of women who have been af­fect­ed by breast can­cer. A breast can­cer sur­vivor’s sto­ry of di­ag­no­sis, surgery and heal­ing, as well as the heart­break of a daugh­ter who lost her moth­er to breast can­cer and who urged view­ers to get test­ed ear­ly, were amongst those fea­tured.

One of the club’s mem­bers al­so al­lowed her­self to be filmed get­ting her first mam­mo­gram, al­low­ing the sis­ters of SI New­town a first-hand view of the process. These ef­forts im­pact­ed pos­i­tive­ly and em­pow­ered women to rise to the chal­lenge and be screened.

Blue Skies, Clear Eyes

An­oth­er project, ‘Blue Skies Clear Eyes’ was a part­ner­ship be­tween SI New­town and an op­ti­cian com­pa­ny that fa­cil­i­tat­ed the vi­sion ex­am­i­na­tion of 12 young ladies from St Jude’s Home for Girls, five of whom re­quired and were fit­ted with eye­glass­es.

The project re­sult­ed in the im­prove­ment of the lives of these young ladies through their ac­cess to cor­rec­tive lens­es which not on­ly boost­ed their self-con­fi­dence but en­hanced their chances of suc­cess in their aca­d­e­m­ic and ca­reer en­deav­ours.

SI New­town’s Christ­mas Car­a­van

In the true spir­it of the Yule­tide sea­son, SI New­town’s Christ­mas Car­a­van aims to make this year just a bit brighter by pro­vid­ing sin­gle-moth­er house­holds with sub­stan­tial food items, clean­ing and hy­giene prod­ucts, fresh fruits and veg­eta­bles to help them nav­i­gate through the Christ­mas sea­son.

Grat­i­tude is a must

All these projects and more are pri­mar­i­ly fund­ed by the club with the Boozy Brunch ini­tia­tive bring­ing a sub­stan­tial chunk of the fund­ing. The ladies of SI New­town are grate­ful to all those who gen­er­ous­ly sup­port­ed and con­tributed to mak­ing this year’s Boozy Brunch an ab­solute suc­cess.

SI New­town al­so in­vites women with a pas­sion for vol­un­teerism to reach out via our so­cial me­dia han­dles to find out how you can be a part of mak­ing a dif­fer­ence in the lives of young girls and women in T&T.

Feel free to vis­it their so­cial me­dia plat­forms:

FB: www.face­book.com/SINew­town/

IG: www.in­sta­gram.com/sinew­town/