History Talk
Once again, we held our June meeting via Zoom. We began with a fascinating and informative talk by Mike Wood of the Richmondshire Museum, for which we were joined by some of our Friendship Link members. Mike spoke about Richmond’s history as part of the Richmond 950 Anniversary celebrations.
Commemoration
After the talk we had a minute’s silence in memory of SIGBI President Johanna Raffan, MBE, who sadly died recently, during her year of office. She is a great loss to Soroptimism.
Programme Action & Activities
Our new President Sharon has been busy keeping up with the Yorkshire Committee and Programme Action group. She has also registerered for the SIGBI and Centenary Conferences later this year. She was sorry to announce that our planned coffee morning for July has been cancelled due to the extension of Covid restrictions. Happily, dates have been offered instead for next year. However, the Mr Yorke’s Open Garden event on Sunday is going ahead as planned. We are providing refreshments at this event in aid of Just the Job, the President’s charity this year. We have enough donations for two hampers to raffle, enough baking offers, and volunteers to serve on the day.
There was also discussion of reviving the Toilet Twinning project which had to be abandoned last year due to Covid. Now things are returning to more nearly normal, we can plan to restart approaching organisations to take part. Judith Clarke also alerted us to another re-cycling opportunity. Superdrug is taking in used pill strips for recycling – although the nearest branch participating is in Harrogate. A good excuse for a visit to Betty’s, perhaps!
Public Newsletter
Members Chris Bowran and Wendy Arrowsmith have produced a Newsletter which is available the Richmond library (where our banner is being displayed). We hope this will encourage new members to join us. It was suggested that this be repeated each quarter, and possibly made available in other local libraries in our area.
Social Opportunities
Social activities are being planned for later in the year. Some members will be attending a Jazz Dinner at The Station in October, and President Sharon suggested attending a Richmond 950 Open Air Cinema event at Aske Hall Stables in September. We have also been alerted to look out for release of tickets for a talk by our Patron, Baroness Hale, former President of the Supreme Court. She will be appearing at The Georgian Theatre Royal as part of the Richmond Walking & Books Festival in September. This coincides with the publication of her memoirs.
Face to Face in July
We are delighted to be planning a face-to-face meeting in July. We have been invited to Colburn Village Hall to hear about the Colburn Food Bank, and a two-course meal will be provided for £10 per head. This will be our first get together in person since February last year. An occasion to look forward to! As our precious meeting location (the Cricket Club) is no longer able to offer us a meal & room option, Jane Priestly, our Social Convener, is investigating other options for us for future meetings.