SI was privileged to take part in the Commonwealth’s ‘Women as Agents of Change’ competition, launched to celebrate the theme of Commonwealth Day 2011. Although we were restricted to only 3 nominations we received many fantastic submissions. This week, we will be running a special blog series to celebrate all the nominations – a fitting close to a month where women have been celebrated across the Commonwealth!

Ann West – United Kingdom

Ann is a member of SI Gravesend and District. Ann achieved a succession of firsts which went on to affect many people in the

UK and worldwide. She:

Started a crèche for staff children at

Cobham
Hall
School for Girls and has served as a local authority governor at a state grammar school and as Chairman of Governors at an independent school;

When Chairman of the Family Panel at Medway Magistrates Court she was instrumental in implementing a procedure for confirming paternity, using a swab/hair/finger prick instead of taking blood samples from babies and young children;

She was the first female Bench chairman at Medway Magistrates Court and after 30 years was awarded the Lord Lieutenant’s Award for a lifetime of services to the magistracy in

Kent;

Ann was the first South East Bench Chairman to sit on the National Bench Chairman’s Forum where she assumed the role of Deputy Chairman.

In 1989 Ann became President of SI Gravesend and went on to work with Soroptimists in Jamaica concerning the use of female ‘mules’ for drug trafficking to the UK. As a result an X-ray arch was installed at Kingston Airport. Ann was witnessing increasing numbers of women in the prison where she was Chairman of the Board of Visitors (Independent Monitoring Board) and this was something relarively simple she could do to change this;

In 2003 Ann was awarded the MBE for services to
North Kent and in 2005 was invited to be a Deputy Lieutenant for

Kent. She now serves as Link DL for Kent Red Cross and Medway Council, and is Chairman of Trustees of the newly amalgamated Medway Age Concerns. She serves on the Business Guild Committee for Rochester Cathedral.

When teaching at Cobham Hall in the late 1960s Ann became involved with

Round Square, (an association of 82 schools worldwide) which aims to educate young people to become caring citizens and leaders of the future across the whole strata of religion, culture and background. In 1994 she became their International Service Project Co-ordinator. The role takes her to countries throughout the world to identify suitable projects for senior students at Member Schools, setting them up and administering them from

UK. Examples of projects include:

1. Providing clean water into Karen Hill Tribe villages in Thailand and in mountain villages in Guatemala;
2. Dormitories for Masai girls in Kenya to keep them at school, and for street boys in Honduras to educate and teach them horticulture;
3. Building schools, village centres and crèches in various parts of India (including Ladakh), Kenya and South Africa to help with education, HIV awareness and sewing skills.

From this work she identified projects which SI Gravesend went on to develop (winning a SIGBI Award for our cotton bags made by women villagers in

India). The money raised from the sale of the bags went to Soroptimist charities and

Round Square projects. Another project involved club members collecting hand sewing machines and haberdashery, which were shipped to

South Africa for HIV affected women to learn sewing skills so that they could earn money for their families.

SI Gravesend have this to say about Ann:

“Ann has a lifetime of unstinted service to others, be it to an elderly person in a day centre or an HIV sufferer in

South Africa.  She continues to work both at home and abroad acting as a catalyst for others to achieve a better way of life.  Ann is a motivated, hard-working and inspiring member of SI Gravesend, acting in local and international community affairs, particularly in Commonwealth countries. In the opinion of SI Gravesend she is certainly an Agent of Change.”

We will continue to share Soroptimist Commonwealth Agents of Change each morning and afternoon this week. We hope you will continue to follow our celebratory blog posts!