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At our 100th Anniversary event, Congresswoman Barbara Lee, US House of Representatives, honored us with this certificate in recognition of 100 years of service to the East Bay Community. 
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Our 100th Anniversary Celebration included a video from our friendship link club SI-Milton Keynes. Thank you!
Our 100th Anniversary Celebration on October 3, 2021 was great fun. Decked out in 1920s attire, nearly 100 Soroptimists and friends from many clubs and several countries came together to celebrate. It was a beautiful day to be remembered. Thanks to all speakers, attendees, donors, and hard working committee members! At our club's 100th Anniversary Celebration, attendees posed as the iconic female in the historical Soroptimist emblem. The President of SI-Milano Fondatore, Italy, addressed our club's 100th Anniversary Celebration with this video. SI-Milano Fondatore was founded in 1928. Thank you to one of our friendship link clubs!
Soroptimist International Bristol sent this wonderful greeting to congratulate our club on its 100th Anniversary Celebration. Thank you, SI-Bristol, for being on of our cherished friendship link clubs!
One of our friendship link clubs, SI Annecy sent anniversary greetings to our 100th Anniversary Celebration on October 3.Dolphine Anyango sent greetings from Soroptimist International of Kisumu, Kenya on the event of our club's 100th Anniversary celebration. Thank you, Dophine, for this wonderful video!
The Oakland Club installs and thanks our elected 2021-22 year officers for their upcoming service: President Carolyn Bolton, Vice President Karen Levin, Treasurer Sheila Wang, Secretary Kay Taylor, and Delegates Joyce Hooks and Jacqueline Cisneros."Yes We Can" is President Carolyn Bolton's theme for the club's new year July 2021-June 2022. Our annual officer installation event last Saturday was especially joyful as it was our first in-person gathering since the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis. Past President Portia Stewart (left) and re-installed President Carolyn Bolton, hosted the event. SI Oakland is proud to participate in Alliance for Girls, a coalition of Bay Area organizations that focus on helping women and girls. Members Portia Stewart and Jan Medina participated in their last conference. 
Our annual "Steps to Success" Shoe Project event was cancelled due to coronavirus, but the Soroptimist Oakland Club members found a way to make a difference in the lives of East Oakland elementary school students. Many of the students at the two schools where we provide the mentoring project can't participate in online learning opportunities because their families don't have computers. Soroptimist of Oakland-The Founder Club is proud to have donated 60 Kindle Fire tablets to help fill that gap. Please consider making a donation to the Shoe Project.   We're excited to announce our new member Jacqueline Cisneros (center)! Here's Carolyn Bolton (left) installing her at our 1/23/20 meeting with her sponsor and sister Khadija Fredericks. Welcome, Jacqueline!
 Girls Inc. of Alameda County and Soroptimist International of Oakland - The Founder Club have partnered up to provide mentorship and guidance to high school aged seniors applying for college admissions and scholarships. Through the Girls Inc. National Scholarship Program, best known as GINS to the applicants, Girls Inc. members are able to apply for national scholarships to help defer the rising costs of education. Six SIO-TFC members have taken an active role, each partnering with one girl: Bertha Dorsey, Leanne Davis, Katharine Miller, Portia Stewart, Kay Taylor, and Sheila Wang, Mentorship includes a weekly meeting between Mentor and Mentee at the Girls Inc. of Alameda County headquarters in Oakland. Guidelines for mentorship include reading, revising, brainstorming and advising in the creation of a scholarship application submission. There are four essays, each weighted differently and comprise over six pages of submission. Our young mentees have been busy writing, and our enthusiastic members have been busy reading!
President Portia Stewart remarked, "I found working with the girls at Girls Inc. to be extremely rewarding and a chance to bond with a young woman grateful for our experience and help. I've offered club's assistance for this project again next year. It was rewarding and the best way to lead is by example. First draft submissions are due by 6pm Friday, November 2nd. We look forward to hearing about the continued successes of our already bright and successful future leaders! See what great work Girls Inc is doing here: https://girlsinc.org/ On September 5, 2018, our club had a wonderful evening with guests from the Soroptimist Club Milano Fondatore, who were celebrating their 90th Anniversary.. Cheryl Poncini and her committee did a tremendous job organizing the event. Our talented member Patricia Costello and her husband Aurelio Mucci generously served as translators for the evening. Several members of our sister club SI El Cerrito were present as well as District Director Elise Balgely. We enjoyed food, wine, and the exchange of gifts. We are extremely grateful to our Italian Soroptimists for their visit and friendship.  The SI Oakland club has been so very proud to have had Kay Taylor as our president for the 2016-2018 terms. Under her confident and graceful leadership, the Oakland group grew remarkably and took on an impressive range of fundraising and service activities. As she closed out her term, President Kay addressed the new officer installation dinner on June 24 with a presentation on the whirlwind of activities that occurred in the last year under her leadership that you can see here.
Kay is trailblazer extraordinaire. She is a retired Kaiser OBGYN medical doctor. She was among the first waves of women entering medicine in the 1970s, and one of the very few to enter medical school as a mother of two. She extended her medical contributions internationally by founding and leading the non-profit volunteer organization Prevention International: No Cervical Cancer. PINCC was dedicated to stopping cervical cancer in developing countries, where it kills 800 women every day. Her teams of volunteers provided high-quality education and training at sites serving women in need in Latin America, Africa and India by establishing self-sufficient, affordable cervical cancer prevention centers. President Kay, thank you on behalf of all of our members. Your shoes will be very hard to fill. We look forward to enjoying your continued leadership as a member of our great club! One way our club works for the betterment of education for girls is by creating menstrual kits as part of the Days for Girls project. The kits are a safe, beautiful, washable, long-lasting alternative for girls in developing countries who often miss school when menstruating due to lack of supplies. Our kits are sent to our sister Soroptimist chapter in Kisumu, Kenya for distribution to students there. They have expressed tremendous gratitude for our support. Here are pictures from our June 2 sewing session. Please consider helping out; see the calendar for our upcoming sewing days!
Filmmaker Emiko Omori and her film crew were onsite at our March 24, 2018 Shoe Project event and produced a 15-minute film that beautifully captured the spirit of the day. Soroptimist International of Oakland greatly thanks her and her team for this work. The work was made possible in part by generous contributions from members Pat Sax and Jan Medina.  On March 24, 2018, we held the annual "Steps to Success" Shoe Project, a program inspired by Soroptimist's "Dream It, Be It" program. Event chairwoman Gwen Johnson explained that the Shoe Project combines mentoring and gifts of new shoes to inspire and motivate girls from two East Oakland schools. Mentors from the community generously volunteered their time to help the girls imagine “where your new shoes will take you." Presenters were:
Our annual holiday luncheon and gift auction raised roughly $1,500 and fun was had by all.
 SI Oakland is offering a special screening of the movie "SOLD" at 7:30pm in Emeryville on September 8, 2016. We are honored to have Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O'Malley with us to introduce the evening and to provide a Q&A session after the film.
Through one extraordinary 13-year-old girl’s story, SOLD illustrates the brutality of child trafficking, which affects millions of children around the globe every year. Based on true stories, SOLD, is the story of Lakshmi who journeys from a pastoral, rural village in Nepal to a gritty brothel/prison called Happiness House in Kolkata, India. SI Oakland is screening the film to raise awareness about sex trafficking of under-age girls, which happens right here in our own communities! SI Oakland, dedicated to what's "Best for Women" and is working with young women locally to build new and better lives, through support and education programs. We hope you can join us for this special event. Contact SI Oakland for tickets. Not able to attend? You can still make a donation to support our work with local organizations who are helping young women and girls rebuild their lives.  Outgoing SIO 2015-16 board (left to right): Secretary Kay, President Cheryl, Vice President Portia, Treasurer Elaine. Dear SIO Members & Friends, Just over a year ago, the planning for the 2015-16 term began with interested members forming a planning committee and club members completing a questionnaire to help plan for this term. The questionnaire covered many topics including interests for fundraisers and service projects, number and location of meetings. It was the response of members to the questions and the results of the planning committee meetings that helped define this term as did my theme - Working Together to Help Create Promising Futures. This term has presented numerous challenges and issues. However, we worked through those challenges and issues to have what I consider to have been a very productive and successful year. While I gave a more detailed presentation about this term at our club business meeting on June 9, the following club accomplishments are worth highlighting because they help to define where this club is at this moment in time and provide the launch pad for this club for the next term. From our many events and activities this term including the wonderful Holiday Auction fundraiser and the Awards Tea at the Camron-Stanford House last February, I consider the following to be the four most significant achievements of our club this year because they embody the spirit of Working Together to Help Create Promising Futures. In no particular order they are: >Revising and updating our bylaws to include the provision of allowing for voting by e-mail or U.S. mail where a quorum is not met at the meeting where the issue is voted upon. Without a doubt, this has allowed our club to address and resolve issues far more expeditiously than we had experienced in previous terms. >Planning for, and holding, a variety of fundraising and service projects to address the needs of different age groups in our community. As to the service projects in particular, we have had projects to serve girls and women of all ages including the Shoe Project for 3rd, 4th & 5th grade girls at an East Oakland elementary school, working with the Young Women’s Saturday Program by having the fundraiser last August as well as working on a no sew blanket project with the girls; putting together bags of personal necessities and toiletry items for the Women’s Daytime Drop-In Center in Berkeley for whom over 40% of their clientele are homeless women from Oakland; packing baskets of items for seniors at a nursing Home in East Oakland and then delivering them as friendly visitors. > While we have reduced the number of monthly club meetings to one effective July 1, we have added not only two friendship links – with SI Milton Keynes, England and SI Milan, Italy -- but also two members this year as well. >With the approval of Soroptimist International of the Americas, the club’s name has been changed to Soroptimist International of Oakland – The Founder Club. This puts our club in a great position to continue the efforts to get Soroptimist and our club on the community’s radar instead of its best kept secret and to continue our efforts to increase our membership. Thank you, everyone, for a great term. I wish the best to President-elect Kay and all Oakland club members for the 2016-17 term. President Cheryl 2015-16
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