Friendship Link meeting Erlangen - Riverside

Friendship Link Meeting

On April 13th I had the honor of being a guest at the monthly meeting of SI Erlangen, Germany, our friendship link and Riverside’s sister city.
I was asked to present a report about what our club was doing during this year of pandemic. I was introduced by Frauke Liers who then interpreted my presentation in German for the rest of the group.
I recounted our activities, beginning with our Valentine Dessert Auction in 2020, which was our last in person event and the fact that we had to cancel our Live Your Dream conference and our Salute to Service event in 2020. I shared with them the resilience with which our chairpersons for our virtual events this year tackled the challenges. JoAnn Moore and her committee pulled off a successful virtual Valentine Auction and Michelle Paradise and her committee presented a powerful and well received virtual Live Your Dream: Dream It, Be It conference with 96 girls registered.
We also found other ways of fundraising such as mail and email campaigns and contacting corporate sponsors. In turn I got to hear about how the Erlangen club is conducting their business. Even as Soroptimist International of the Americas has loosened some of the restrictions as far as in person meetings, Germany is still under a very strict lockdown that includes a nightly curfew. It was very special seeing some familiar faces in the group of 23 women in attendance, as I had the pleasure of visiting Erlangen in 2015 and 2016 representing SI Riverside.
We talked about the planned visit of a Riverside contingent coming to Erlangen in June of 2022. We also hope to resume our program of sponsoring a young lady to visit each other’s city next year as well. Each member present sent her heartfelt greetings to the members of SI Riverside and we look forward to being able to meet in person again soon.

Lynn Scecina

Riversidelines May 2021