A Celebration of Membership – SI Cannock & District
New Ways of Meeting & Getting in Touch
Our group has always liked to keep in touch between meetings and in addition to the emails we have always sent, we set up a WhatsApp Group a long time before lockdown which has proved a fabulous way to get information to members quickly and easily. However when our club meetings had to be cancelled, we renewed our efforts to get those members that weren’t a part of the group to join in and it has proved a wonderful way of communicating and sharing information, offers of help and often photographs & video clips that have kept our spirits up!
For a more personal chat, we have buddied each member with one other who have been able to provide one to one support to each other if and when it’s needed by keeping in touch by telephone and texts and it’s hopefully forged deeper friendships within the club.
However, our star communicator has to be Zoom! We started to have Zoom meetings almost immediately after lockdown & have obtained a license for the club ensuring security and enabling us to meet for longer than forty minutes which is never long enough! Zoom has become a big part of how we function. We held our AGM on Zoom which although wasn’t as good as all being together, provided us with the ability to carry on the business of our club. We have held subsequent Business meetings and PA meetings this way too.
We have held two speaker meetings on Zoom, the first a fascinating insight into the Samaritans. It was the first time our speaker had used Zoom & he really enjoyed it!
Our second speaker meeting was a fabulous success! The 11 year old daughter of one of our members has formed a local Children against Climate Change group & has produced a PowerPoint presentation identifying many of the results climate change has caused to our planet. We thought this wonderful effort needed to be seen by our members and, through the power of Zoom, as many of our friends as we could get! We were all encouraged to ask a friend to join the meeting and we had nine guests, one all the way from South Africa! Our star guest however, was Naina Shah of SI Chennai, who is SI Programme Director for the Planet! She joined us from India, something she would never have been able to do if we had held a conventional meeting! We were all enthused and using the Eco Pledge sheet we had all been sent electronically, we gave our pledges of what we are personally going to do to help slow the effects of Climate Change.
Finally, we have planned to join our Friendship Club, SI Melbourne at their Zoom meeting on Wednesday 22nd July! It will be an early meeting for SI C & D. Due to the time difference; we will be meeting them at 9:30am! This will be a rare chance to speak to our friends from overseas rather than exchange newsletters & will be all the more important as they are all currently on lockdown.
Zoom has been such a success for our club that we will probably continue to use it for some meetings in the future, many of our members have embraced it and have so enjoyed the chance to get together virtually in these difficult times.
Serving our Communities
Our PA Committee has been very busy trying to keep up with all of the ways we have served our community since Covid 19. Attached are two newsletters that show what we have done!
PLEASE CLICK ON THE LINKS BELOW TO ACCESS OUR CLUB PA NEWLETTERS
SI C & D P A Newsletter July 2020
Growing Our Membership
At one of our Business meetings, a member commented that as we are currently meeting virtually, we may attract women who aren’t able to attend our meetings in person due to work or home commitments, but would be able to attend a meeting on Zoom to see what SI is all about and what we do as a group and for our communities. So, we sent a press release via our Facebook and Twitter accounts as well as our usual press contacts, which were shared by our members inviting people to get in touch to find out more. This is a relatively new initiative so we are still waiting for results.
We are also quietly confident that a few of the guests that joined us at our last meeting may just want to join us! Watch this space!!
In conclusion, this has been a very difficult period for all of our members as it has been for the world, but we have endeavoured to keep in touch, stay connected and continue to do what we do best, Inspire Action & Transform Lives!