Chairman's Message Board - May 2016
Spring Council Meeting –Riviera Centre, Torquay 13th April 2016
I hope you all enjoyed the Spring Council meeting as much as I did? The weather was perfect, the venue was first class and we didn’t have a fire alarm! All of the presentations were excellent.
Benjamin Mee our main speaker was inspirational and we hope to establish some closer contacts with Dartmoor Zoo in the future. Keep a look out for more details later this year.
Tony Potter talking about the North Devon Charity, the Calvert Trust also seemed to touch people as a bucket collection from individual members raised over £850.
Joseph Harvey revealed some of the secrets of Torre Abbey Historic House and Gardens located just a stone’s throw from the Riviera Centre, well worth a visit next time you are in Torquay.
As usual our own local talent also kept us well entertained. Thank you to all the ladies involved in giving us a lovely taster of ‘100 years of what we wore’ and to the Torbay WI singers who so beautifully finished off the day.
Lastly a big thank you to all of you who came along on the day, without your support and enthusiasm these events would just not take place. I hope you will return to your WIs and encourage more of your members to come along next year.
Food Security Day – Longdown, 25th April 2016
I was fortunate to be able to attend the Food Security Day recently. We are sorry we couldn’t fit you all in as it was heavily oversubscribed. This was an excellent day organised by Environment and Rural Affairs Subcommittee with speakers from the producer and retail sides, resulting in some interesting and challenging discussions. In addition a couple of ideas were raised from the audience which might be of interest to WIs:
Jan Ashworth from Woolsery WI described how her WI developed a booklet called a Local Food Resource, providing information for her own community and visitors to enable them to find local food producers.
Sylvia Crocker from Lewtrenchard WI encouraged members to visit their local supermarket and suggest to the Manager that they should include single pints of milk alongside their sandwich/lunch displays in the chiller cabinets as a way of supporting our dairy farmers.
The Environment and Rural Affairs Subcommittee will be circulating more information shortly about these relatively simple projects so that you too can make a difference in your community.
Member Representation on NFWI Committees
If there are any members who have a skill or expertise in any field which may be beneficial to an NFWI committee (for example science, education, arts, crafts, sport or campaign work) and would like to be nominated by the Federation to sit on one of the NFWI committees, please contact me for further details.
Spoons - A Stirring Tale!
This is a collaborative project between the NFWI Craft committee and Salisbury Museum to encourage WI members to knit and stitch spoons, based around the collection of spoons found in the museum. All of the pieces will be sent to a ceramics artist for dipping in porcelain and once fired the completed items will then be exhibited. More details and dates of the workshops are available on the Moodle or from me.
If you are interested in any of the above and would like to put your name forward or would like more information please contact me in the first instance, unless specified otherwise.
Julie Ayre, Federation Chairman
julie.ayre@devonwi.org.uk
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