34 Annual Meeting Minutes Held on Tuesday, 4 April, 2017
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West Yorkshire Federation of Women’s Institutes 34TH ANNUAL MEETING MINUTES HELD ON TUESDAY, 4TH APRIL, 2017 FEDERATION CHAIRMAN – MRS MAUREEN HANCOX Health & Safety announcement given by Maureen Hancox Jerusalem played by Jo Murphy of Wilsden WI Welcome message to members & guests given by Maureen Hancox ‘It gives me great pleasure to address you as your Federation Chairman at our 34th Annual Meeting. Thank you to you all; it is wonderful to see so many here today in this magnificent venue. A special welcome to our guests from East Yorkshire, North Yorkshire East, North Yorkshire West & South Yorkshire Federations and thank you to everyone for supporting our Annual Meeting today. We have received apologies from Yvonne Todd and Badsworth WI who cannot be with us today’. The Minutes from the 2016 Annual Meeting were on the stage for members read at lunchtime ready for approval in the afternoon. Board of Trustees introduction presented by Maureen Hancox ‘I would like to take this opportunity to introduce you to your Board of Trustees – some of you may have met them before but some of you may not know who they are. Sue Stothers – Honorary Treasurer – Sue will be presenting her financial report later this morning, Senior Vice Chairman Kathleen Hardcastle, Vice Chairmen Gaye Baird and Heather Ross, Membership Support Chairman -Helena Harrington, Marion Lawes our Fundraising Officer, Valerie Pearson – Home Economics & Handicrafts Secretary and Penelope Scott-Rowley our Health and Safety Officer. Unfortunately our 50/50 scheme coordinator -Yvonne Todd is unable to be with us today’. Chairman’s Speech Maureen Hancox – Federation Chairman ‘Embracing Change! Just over 100 years since the start of the Women’s Institute and how times have changed! This year in the Federation we have been Embracing Change – a change of Chairman! So yes the Board of Trustees have embraced this change and each Trustee has a role to play in the success of the Federation and to ensure that you all get value for money from your Membership. Our Membership has increased by 878; at the end of 2015 we had 2482 members and at the end of 2016 we had 3360 members and we now have 80 WIs. This increase in Membership has been a major contributing factor to our success last year, but sadly, we have recently closed 3 WIs. We have to embrace our new WIs and new members but we must not forget our long standing ones too. A big thank you must go to our two WI Advisers for all their hard work involved in the formation of these; Helena Harrington and Gillian Swift have put a great deal of time and effort into getting these up and running over the last two years. Rosemary Pearson from Croft House Cookies has been accepted on the NFWI Adviser training course so we will have another WIA to share the workload at the end of 2017. It is great to have you join the team Rosemary. How are we going to support new WIs at their formation and to continue to support them? For those of you here from our newer Institutes you will remember that it is not an easy task when you first start out with lots of questions to answer! We are working on a new Pack which will contain all the help and guidance when starting out. Your allocated Adviser and Friend are there to support you through this journey. It is all about the right person supporting you and getting the best customer service. In 2016 we opened 4 new Institutes and I would like to take this opportunity to welcome Clayton Village, Horbury Afternooners, Newmillerdam and Pomfret and in January this year we opened Garforth, Idle and Steeton Bobbins – let’s have a wave from you. Remember our WI Advisers are there to support all of our Institutes not just our newer ones. You also, all have a WI Friend as your first port of call for advice. I have visited a number of WIs since last April as your Chairman, WI Ambassador, WI Friend and Denman Ambassador and it has been rewarding to be part of your WI and to introduce myself to your members. We plan to visit more WIs this year so don’t be alarmed when you get a call to say we are visiting – we are here to support you and we don’t want you to think we have forgotten you! You can also book the WI Ambassadors presentation –as this a great way for us to visit you and tell your members all about the WI. We have embraced change in the way we communicate with WIs and members. The introduction of a Communications Team last year with Social Media Co-ordinators has enabled us to use the range of Social Media platforms - Liz Walker and Karen Piotr have done a great job in sharing our news and events with our WIs and Members via Twitter and Facebook. Sue Waring our Webpages Co-ordinator has worked hard this year modernising our web pages on the NFWI website so please do take a look at the Communications Hub where you will be able to see first-hand what we have planned. Social Media has been embraced both by the Federation and our Institutes – it is a great way to share information. One success story is the Federation banner – seeing the banner and individual panels on Facebook and Twitter has engaged more of our WIs and they have responded and sent us their panels. I hope you agree the banners look fantastic hanging in the Winter Gardens today. Take a look and if your WI isn’t represented please ask your craft group or a member at your meeting to make one - fingers crossed all 80 WIs will be represented next year! At the start of 2016 the introduction of eWYN brought our popular newsletter into the 21st Century whereby the newsletter is emailed to Members – who would have thought 10 years ago that we would be emailing as much as we do today! This has increased the circulation of WYN and it is great that more of our Members are kept informed and have joined us at Federation events. It goes to show that if Members are given the opportunity to read WYN they are inspired to join in with the Federation events and in doing so they gain more from their membership and being part of this great organisation. I would like to see all of our WIs receiving the newsletter – at 5p a copy for eWYN it doesn’t break the bank! We still have 6 WIs that only receive the secretary’s copy which means those members’ are not able to embrace the Women’s Institute as a whole or gain the maximum from their membership! What is the way forward with our Newsletter – should it be a mini WYN to fit in your handbag and to not have as much information per page? Would it be easier for you to read on your tablet? Something to think about and I would welcome your comments! The Federation Sub-Committees have worked hard as a team to continually keep abreast of our ever changing Membership and they have planned events that are exciting and different. Members have been keen to attend and in some cases events have been sold out and with a waiting list! How can we improve what we offer? Please do let us know - take a look at the stands and talk to the Sub-committee members here today. We need your continued support to come along to our events. Are you keen to be more involved at Federation level - would you like to join the team to help to move the Federation forward and help build upon the success of last year? Then please do talk to the Board of Trustees and committee members today. In October we were pleased to welcome Carol Wride to work alongside Liz, our Federation Company Secretary. Carol comes to us with a wealth of knowledge having worked for a Charity and she is working 8 hours over 2 days dealing with event bookings, the Year Book and general office work. It is great to have Carol join the team to support the Federation, Institutes and Members. So what do we have planned for the future? 2020 is a year of remembrance and celebrations for the ‘Yorkshire’ Federations as it would have been its Centenary year. In 1983 the Yorkshire Federation was divided into five Federations – East Yorkshire, North Yorkshire East, North Yorkshire West, South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire. To celebrate the Federations are coming together and we will each have a major event planned with dates throughout the year which Members will be able to attend across the county. There will also be a Thanksgiving Service in York Minster on 29th February 2020 – a date not to be missed and something to look forward to! For all our enterprising members who like a competition we invite you to design a product that could be produced commercially to commemorate the Yorkshire Federations centenary. Full details of the schedule are on the Promotion stand and will be in May WYN if you are interested. There will be a winner from each Federation which will go forward to be judged and the overall winner will have her design produced to be sold as a memento for 2020. Finally, I would like to thank you the members for the support you have given me in my first year as Federation Chairman and the good wishes I have received.