Here is the January update on what has been happening in SI Richmond and Dales. We have started the New Year with a bang – let’s hope this continues through 2023!
Sharing our Skills (SOS) project
We have started working with this year’s cohort of students from Richmond School who have joined our Sharing Our Skills Project. This project has been running for 10 years. Students attend our Monthly Club meetings and sit in on our Zoom Executive meetings from January to March. We provide them with “buddies” to help them get the most they can from the experience of seeing how our organisation works, the range of activities in our Club Programme and learning about the Soroptimist Vision and Mission. We also ask them to do a project of their own in the school on a suitable theme.
This year we have 7 students, and they are really steaming ahead. They have decided to work on provision of water, water being a feminist issue. To this end they’re organising a bingo night at the school towards the end of this term. They are dividing up the jobs between them, each taking the lead on a different aspect – setting up the venue, refreshments, publicity, poster and ticket design, provision of prizes. They’ve even recruited a couple of lads who are apparently very good at giving presentations to give a short talk on the night about how lack of fresh water supplies affects women and girls. Project Leader Chris Bowran has also put them in touch with a charity working in this field, suggested by another member.
January Planning Meeting
We held our second “brainstorming” planning meeting at the Holiday Inn Scotch Corner this month. As we did last year, this was a 5 hour meeting (two sessions separated by lunch) to decide on the plans for the year from April to March, 2023-4. As we do not have a ‘conventional’ Club President who devises her own plan for the year, we agree among ourselves what the next year will look like. Our programme action plans, speakers and other activities were all brainstormed and another interesting and challenging year has been devised.
We also reviewed how this new approach to our organisation had worked over the last year. Although it has worked well overall, we decided that would be useful to have more continuity between meetings. Instead of a monthly rotating chairperson, which we have in this current year, Babs Hunt – our Treasurer – has kindly agreed to be our Meetings Chair for next year. All the Executive posts have also been agreed, with some officers continuing in post and some new volunteers who will be taking up posts from April. As this has been agreed in advance, the new members will be able to have a handover period before taking office.
Tree Planting
At long last, the Richmondshire Landscape Trust has notified us that our 3 lime trees have been planted. These were part of the SI Centenary tree planting programme, but were delayed due to the difficulty of obtaining suitable saplings. They have been planted on the south side of the East Wood at Westfields area of Richmond. The Trust had to fell 2 large ash trees due to dieback, so our trees will in time replace those. They are awaiting timber guards which will be in place before the sheep go into Westfield’s in the spring. We were told “they are really nice trees and will make a great contribution to the landscape!”.
