SAY Women Celebration – AGM 2023

We decided to turn our AGM into a celebration of SAY Women and the achievements of our young women.

On 15th November 2023 we held a party in the Metropolitan Bar, just across from our office in Bell Street, with mocktails, a buffet, a fabulous cake and very special guest, comedian Ria Lina.

We invited our members, funders and partners from other services to join some of our young women, staff and members of both our Boards, and we had a great turn-out. Everyone enjoyed the opportunity to get together, catch up and hear about what has been happening at SAY Women over the year.

• Lynsey Campbell, our new Patron alongside Madeline Black, introduced herself and gave some insight into her life and the reasons why she became a Patron for SAY Women.
• One of our young women living in the Accommodation Project shared her experiences of our service, telling us how it has helped her change her life around and what it’s like to be part of the SAY Women Community.
• One of our Advisory Board members explained the role of the Advisory Board, highlighting its progress over the year and how important it is to SAY Women, as well as the valuable experience it gives to the members of the board themselves.
• Ria Lina told us of her personal and professional experiences of toxic attitudes of men towards women, particularly as a female in a predominantly male comedy circuit and following the recent allegations that had emerged about Russell Brand. 

 A fabulous evening was rounded off with music from Vicky Paxton. Vicky is a BA Music Production student at New College Lanarkshire. She had just written a song called ‘White-noise’, and as she felt the emotion in her song resonated with the experiences of our young women, she wanted to donate proceeds of sales of the single to SAY Women. She also kindly agreed to come along and perform it for us at our celebration, along with some of her other music. She was amazing and her performance was enjoyed by us all. The single is available on Bandcamp, and it raised £250 for us in the first week of its release. We wish her and her band ‘Everyone Needs Therapy’ all the best in the future.