Feed yourself – and the bees as well!
Feed yourself and the bees as well – Michelle Ernoult’s tips on planting to keep the bees happy and provide you with food.
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Violence Against Women
The Vixens’ powerful pennants spell it out, Enough is Enough – the story behind the pennants naming the women murdered since Sarah Everard was killed in March 2021
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STILL TIME FOR A FOREST SCHOOL BURSARY
APRIL 19 is the closing date for applications for the £400 bursary offered by Surrey Wildlife Trust towards the £490 cost of training as a Level 2 Forest School Assistant.
The course takes place over four days on May 9-10 and June 13-14 this year at Nower Wood Educational Nature Reserve at Leatherhead.
Participants should be over 18 with some experience of working with young people or adults — youth workers, teaching assistants or teachers, for example. They will have to pay the balance of £90 and in addition they must:
Be DBS checked;
Attend four days of theory and practice;
Be able to assist with the planning and delivery of three Forest School sessions;
Complete a workbook of evidence.
The course commitment is approximately 60 hours. For full details see last month’s magazine (back copies available on MyWI).
To apply, write or email the Federation office with your name, address, phone number and name of your WI, stating why you are applying for the bursary, your experience of working within the community and the qualities you are able to bring to this role.
Applicants will be shortlisted by the Federation and may then be interviewed by a member of the Surrey Wildlife Trust staff.
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IT’S RESOLUTION TIME AGAIN
BY the time you read this we should know (or be about to be informed) which resolution* has been chosen from your January selection for debate at the NFWI Annual Meeting in June. It will be presented to members, usually at their May meeting, in order that everyone has the opportunity to discuss it.
It will be necessary to find someone from within each WI, not necessarily a committee member (or it could be more than one person), to present the chosen resolution to the members and lead the discussion on it.
There will be plenty of useful information and suggested references to help them on MyWI. In addition to these resources, there will be three resolutions workshops, one at SFWI headquarters and one at St Mary’s, Fetcham, and an online session to assist in the preparation of the presentation of the resolution to your WI. We recommend that all NFWI annual meeting delegates attend one of these as well as anyone who is presenting the resolution to their WI.
A delegate will have been chosen to represent your WI at the Annual Meeting. If she is not from within your own WI, you may wish to invite her to this meeting, so that she gets a feel for the mood of your WI and how members view the chosen resolution.
At the end of your WI’s deliberations, all full members will be asked to vote by secret ballot for or against the resolution and the result of this vote will be communicated to your delegate. The delegate does not need to know how many votes were cast, just the majority vote outcome. If there is more than one resolution to vote on, each must have a vote for/against. The resolutions would not be either/or, each will be considered.
Resolutions meetings and debates can be quite intense, so it is useful to have a light-hearted activity to round things off, such as bingo or a beetle drive.
Even if your delegate doesn’t come to your Resolution Meeting, she will need to be informed of the decision within your WI and also whether she will be given “discretion.”
This means that if, at the Annual Meeting, it is decided to vary the wording of the resolution, she will still be able to vote on your WI’s behalf. Without discretion she can only vote on your behalf if the resolution wording remains exactly as it was originally presented to and voted on by your WI. It is very rare for the wording of a resolution to be changed as a result of the debate at the Annual Meeting, but it has happened.
Finally, after the Annual Meeting, delegates will need to present a report on the proceedings to the WIs that they were representing
* On occasions two resolutions have been shortlisted. It may be less onerous to have different members presenting these.
By Carole Hurlestone-Clarke, WI Adviser
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HELP US TO FIND MORE SPEAKERS
WE are delighted that auditions are returning, and we know from our previous audience attendance just how much you enjoy them. It’s the ideal opportunity to meet other WI members, experience new and exciting speakers, and to help plan your programme or a special WI occasion.
Sadly, we have a very limited number of speakers on our list waiting to audition and need your help urgently.
If you have booked and enjoyed a good speaker and they are not already in the Yearbook, please ask if they would be prepared to audition to join our list of entertaining and informative approved speakers.
If they agree, please complete the confidential speakers feedback form, adding their name, address and contact details, and I will do the rest.
The form is available on the SFWI website, or please drop me an email, and I will forward one to you.
If we are unable to increase our prospective speaker applications, it is more than likely we will have to stop audition events, which would be such a shame for us all.
Thank you for your help.
Sally Digby, auditions@surreyfedwi.org.uk
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April’s Surrey WI News is now available for you to read online.
In this month’s edition there is plenty of interesting reading including: Roll of Horror from Surrey Vixens, Resolutions, review of recent meetings and much more.
It is available to view on your phone, tablet or computer via Flipsnack@ April Surrey WI News.
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Build on the past for a happy new WI year!
Happy New Year! No, this is not an April fool joke as April 1 is now the start of the WI membership year and coincides with the biennial appointment of the Federation trustees and the annual voting for the Federation officers: Chairman, Treasurer and Vice-Chairmen.
What this new year holds for us all is largely unknown, but a critical measure of its success will be the number of current members who re-join, the recruitment of new ones and when, hopefully, Covid-19 restrictions will become a thing of the past.
At Federation level, April also heralds the appointment of Committee Chairmen and Federation roles. Have you thought about joining a Federation committee or becoming a trustee? April 2022 would be an excellent time to do this as we move forward, I trust, into what will be an optimistic and settled future. Will you join us? Come along and shadow a meeting and find out what stepping up could mean for you!
April is, of course, also the beginning of Spring, with new life, new beginnings, new challenges and for the WI, a new world rooted in a tradition that must not be underestimated and yet forward thinking.
It is a time for me, still with childlike wonder, to spot the first frog spawn of the year — always a moment of excitement and promise. It encouraged me to search for a dictionary definition of the word ‘new’. I came up with ‘fresh, modern, unprecedented, youthful (in mind)’, which put a creative twist on the word.
It prompted me to make a resolution for us all; that we should build on our heritage, do things even better, learn faster and, as a result, be stronger as WIs, for I firmly believe that 2022 will be a year of transformation for all levels of the organisation. Together we will need to be both forward thinking and forward doing.
Surely all we have learned from Covid in the past two years will inspire us to both consolidate all that we have achieved and to greet the future with imagination and enthusiasm. The secret of such change will be to focus our energies not on fighting the old, but on building the new upon the legacy we inherit.
Key words
I am not, for one moment, suggesting that our position is less than good; in fact the strength, commitment and resolution of you, our members, has ensured that our WIs and our Federation is in the very strongest of positions. However, I do believe that we will be called upon to meet new challenges in the exciting times ahead.
For me, there are two key words giving focus to future actions: Retention and Recruitment, terms harking back to my previous life as a University Learning and Teaching Co-ordinator.
Key to the Federation’s future success is, first of all, the retention of our current wonderful members who are the backbone of our organisation. But we must also look to the future and address how we can ‘grow’ our membership, championing equality, diversity and inclusion. We may need to adapt but we have very firm foundations to build upon.
One challenge we will all have to meet has been presented to us as a fait accompli by NFWI, namely that from July, all their communications with Federations and WIs will be in digital form only. Fear not, if any WIs need hard copies then the Federation will ensure that they have them.
Another challenge to us all will be balancing our income against expenditure as anticipated costs rise. Maybe we can have a sharing of ideas here to ensure that WIs don’t constantly reinvent the wheel. Some WIs might also see the adoption of Office 365 as a challenge whilst others have welcomed it as a benefit. Whatever your WI’s standpoint the office will support you in ensuring that you receive key documents and communications in the form most appropriate to you and that, when you are ready, you will be offered an Office 365 induction programme.
In my former life I worked in Hong Kong during early Spring, often over the Chinese New Year. The only Cantonese I ever mastered was the New Year greeting ‘Gong hei fat choy’. The New Year has a very specific significance for Hong Kong and its people, and I think that the message of the Chinese New Year 2022 has a particular resonance and should inspire us all.
It is an uplifting message of bravery, courage, strength and hope. A message that will resonate with us all, I am sure, as we embrace our future together as members of the WI and that these words, along with the precepts of the WI movement of truth, justice, tolerance and friendship, will come to the fore, will inspire us and will be as relevant to us today, as we move forward, as they were in 1915.
Happy New Year!
Carol A. Gartrell
Federation Chairman
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ACWW by JILL MULRYAN
What does ACWW actually do? Read how a simple project like providing giant water butts to provide African villages with clean water has transformed the lives of women and their families.
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THIS IS ME AND THE CLIMATE by ROSEMARY HORTON
Gas boilers v heat pumps – the shape of things to come? Rosemary Horton, our climate change ambassador, looks at the pros and cons about the way we may have to heat our homes in future.
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A unique carving by an Indian workman inspired one of HMP Send’s artists to create a birthday card for the Countess of Wessex, commissioned by her local WI
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