Hello everyone
I hope you are all well.
Well, where do I start this month’s Chair’s Chat? Ah I know, the Middlesex Federation Annual Council Meeting!
What an excellent day we had! I do hope that those of you who attended enjoyed it. For those who didn’t attend—where were you??
As I have mentioned, we changed our venue this year to Ealing, to hopefully make it more accessible to more WIs and several have said it worked well for them.
The location was very good, with plenty of space to eat your lunch or cafes and coffee shops a few minutes walk away.
We had two excellent speakers, Bonita Norris and Eliza McClelland; totally different, but they really complemented each other.
I would like to thank Gill Wildman from Hayes Town WI and her team of Stewards who helped to organise our visitors, Mary Jeffery and Maureen Stone from Stanwell WI who provided an excellent raffle and our super Secretary Georgina who was sorting everything out behind the scenes.
Of course, special thanks go to the Board of Trustees, who worked so hard to organise this event—it wasn’t easy!
Many thanks as well to all members who attended. I have had some lovely feedback from those who did attend, I am really pleased that you enjoyed it.
However, on a less positive note, we were very disappointed in the number of members who actually came. We have over 1500 members from 44 WIs in Middlesex and only a fraction of that number attended.
Why is this?
I know some of you are still a bit apprehensive about attending large gatherings and I understand this, but we really hoped that more members would come along, especially as it was the first major meeting for us since lockdown.
We changed the venue, to make it more accessible to more WIs and we had inspiring and amusing speakers. I am not sure what else we could have done.
I would be really grateful if you would give us some feedback of why you didn’t attend.
Is there something else you would like from these meetings? We have to do ‘the business’, but after that we are always open to your thoughts and ideas.
As mentioned, the Federation is hoping to put on more events in the coming year. We are starting with a Theatre outing to Frozen on 12 May, which Julia Lewis is organising for us. More information was sent to WI Officers on 27 March.
Finally, It’s renewal time for those of you who have a paper version of the Newsletter, Information on how to order has been sent to your Secretaries.
Have a good month
Angela