Happy New Year!
Annual Planning Day
Not surprisingly, January is a fairly quiet month. Our main activity is to begin 2025 with our annual planning day at the Holiday Inn, Scotch Corner. This is when we discuss what SI Richmond & Dales will be doing in our next year, April 2025 – March 2026, and review where we are as we approach the end of the current year. We were delighted to be joined for the meeting by our two new Sharing our Skills students from Richmond School.
Review of processes
Our first task was to reflect on how the organisation has been operating, and some improvements to our routines were agreed, and Executive posts confirmed. We decided to revive having Programme Action Review as part of our AGM, and some ideas for new projects were considered to run alongside our ongoing activities.
Charity Funding
We also apportioned the charity funds which have not yet been allocated, and agreed to make donations to the Richmondshire Museum, and our sister club SI Harare, among others. The Museum will be providing space for a follow on exhibition of our International Women’s Day Exhibition planned for Richmond Town Hall in March. SI Harare is working within a national programme to promote cervical cancer screening and HPV vaccinations. We also nominated organisations to be our new Annual Charity following on from our successful project this year with Richmond Dales Amateur Swimming Club.
Events and Club Meetings
There was a very fruitful discussion of possible speakers for our meetings in the coming year. These were wide-ranging and overlapped in some cases with charity proposals. We soon had a very interesting tentative programme in place.
One of our members has offered to run a quiz, which will make an excellent fundraising event, alongside our usual Coffee Mornings. In addition, some suggestions were made for social events. We have been offered a tour of Easby Abbey, one of our local English Heritage sites. This could be combined with a picnic in the grounds during the summer. Several members also volunteered to host a bring a dish supper.
All the above proposals are being circulated to the full membership for comments and votes on proposals – as some members were unable to attend the session. All told a very successful meeting, and some exciting ideas on offer for next year.