Oswestry Borders University of the Third Age Borders Bulletin Volume 5, Issue 1 Winter 2018 What makes our U3A tick? When Oswestry Borders U3A started in 2013, a team of twelve volunteers formed a steering committee to get the ball rolling. In 2014 our first elected committee took on specific roles to ensure OBU3A had an effective support structure in place to guarantee the smooth running of membership, meeting venues, interest groups, and our monthly gatherings at Speaker and Members’ Meetings. Fortunately, with each subsequent year, many of the early volunteers have enthusiastically continued in We recently joined members of their committee roles, joined by Oswestry U3A at the Qube for a one/two newly elected committee demonstration about Beacon, members. The current committee membership system software, of eleven is pictured opposite. which has the backing of the Third Age Trust. For more details 2018 brings with it some fresh see ICT item on page 9. challenges. With five of the original committee still in post, and with their six year time limit on committee drawing to a close, a big push is needed to draw in more committee members. It’s important to act now to ensure there’s a continuity of experienced committee members mentoring the newcomers. Public Relations 2 Interest Groups 3— 6 To raise awareness about different committee roles, the PR team has put together a presentation for our February Members’ Meeting, The current post Speaker Meetings 7 holders will lead small group discussions and posters summarising committee Members’ Meetings 8 tasks in simple, everyday language will be on display. Committee News 9-10 Amsterdam mini-break Interest Group Information 11 February Planner 12 In conjunction with Owen’s Coaches, Oswestry, we are pleased to offer our members and guests a spring mini-break to Holland with a mini-cruise and trips to Amsterdam and the famous Keukenhof Gardens. The mini-break is from April 8 - 12, 2018 and costs £375, or £355 if 25 people or more book. There’s a limited availability of single supplement at £70. Owen’s Coaches are willing to offer us a private coach tour if we have sufficient numbers. Trip organiser, Pat Evans, thinks Owen’s package offers a really good itinerary, representing excellent value. There will be several of us on our own, in addition to couples, so please join us if you are a single traveller. We had excellent feedback from our last two mini breaks, when everyone had a really enjoyable time. We will need numbers as quickly as possible, so please email Pat Evans or Carole Greig to register your interest ASAP as we are opening this trip to Oswestry U3A too. Details will be available at our next meeting on February 7. Pat Evans Borders Bulletin Volume 5 Issue 1 Chairperson’s message Finances I wish you all a happy New Year. Oswestry Borders U3A continues to give OBU3A finances for the 10 our members the opportunity to “Learn, Laugh and Live”. It has been a very months to the end of January, busy and successful 2017 and this has been because of all our members 2018 are as follows: who continue to give so much of their time. Income totalled £6,272 The Third Age Trust continues to keep your Executive Committee on its toes, (Outings £3,268, Membership £1,851, Meeting charges £982, having over Christmas issued a pile of papers highlighting some changes in Equipment £57, Room hire £90 the way the Trust carries out its activities. Your Committee will be discussing and TAT mailing £23). this at the next meeting on January 23. If any of you are considering coming Expenditure totalled £5,308 on the Committee, now would be a good time to let me know so you can be (Outings £3,133, Room Hire kept informed of the changes. We will be letting members know about the £935, Speaker fees £675, changes after the meeting. Refreshments £211, Stationery £198, Equipment £156). E-mail newsletters from the Third Age Trust are available to all members but With an opening balance of you must sign up to receive them at u3a.org.uk/email. £2,993, and a closing balance The Trust has asked all Members to take care online as Scammers are send- of £3,957, the year’s gain to date stands at £964. ing false invoices to small organisations like us. Pam Broomby, Chair, January 2018 Public Relations The PR team considered several events and venues In addition, a Flickr photography Gallery was created, with to promote Oswestry Borders U3A during 2017. links from the OBU3A website to more than 1500 photos from Some, like Oswestry Show and Ellesmere’s MereFest, Speaker and Members’ meetings and our Interest Group proved too expensive to exhibit, given our limited activities. We have also refreshed new links to Oswestry funds. Others, like the varied programme of open-air U3A’s website and, whenever requested, added links like the markets in Oswestry, and our annual week-long laptop and projector setting up instructional video, located on promotion event in Oswestry library, were taken up as the Useful Links. To date, the website has had 52,429 hits. they involved no cost, other than for publicity material. We’ve been actively promoting guest speakers in advance of Whenever possible, we’ve maximised on attracting our monthly Speaker Meetings with the local press. This is new Borders U3A members among people attending working well, as we have had feedback of a steady trickle of events at our shared venue, Oswestry Senior Citizens’ new people attending as a result of seeing these articles. Club in Lorne Street. We now have a notice board in the entrance to the building, where we’re able to tell When OBU3A started, there was a specific role for the them about meetings, interest groups and various monthly, then quarterly, Borders Bulletin. Now, with the web- trips. Whenever possible, general invites to events site, Facebook page, Flickr Photo Gallery and regular Internal have been exchanged between the two committees. Communication emails, the format and frequency of the online publication needs to be reviewed and alternatives considered. We are still looking for volunteers to visit and film our interest group activities to put together a video that will With an ambitious U3A national target to achieve one million help explain what we do at events and group meet- members by 2020, we are developing goals to make PR work ings. better for our organisation. We will review the productivity of PR events, to research and understand local demographics Two new IT ventures were developed in 2017. With better. This will inform how we attract and maintain future new the help of Phil Pointon, we added to OBU3A’s web- membership through effective promotion strategies. site and our emailing by embracing social networking Jane Davies, PR Lead with a new group Facebook page. In the future, as we draw in new, younger generation, ICT-savvy mem- bers, there will be an expectation for organisations like OBU3A to have social network systems in place for effective communications. Our Facebook page posts encourage a community feel, keeping all members informed about both future and past events, bringing together members who attend both the speaker and members’ meetings with those members who don't. Jane Davies promoting Oswestry Borders Page 2 U3A at the town library in September. Interest Groups Borders Bulletin Volume 5, Issue 1 It appears that January has been something of a catch-up month for many of our interest groups, The sudden fall of snow in December meant several planned Christmas get-togethers had to be cancelled. But our social networks are strong and a series of belated festive gatherings popped up throughout January. The New Year brought three new groups, two Welsh Learner groups and a second Book group was formed to accommodate the rising numbers. New Welsh Learners Interest Groups These two new groups held their first meeting on Wednesday, January 3, meeting in the Oswestry Senior Citizens’ Club premises in Lorne Street from 11.30 a.m. to 1 p.m. in order to allow members to continue to stay on for the Speaker and Members’ Meetings that are held in the afternoon of the first and third Wednesday of the month. Around 12 members at- tended to discuss how to start the process of learning to speak a little Welsh and how to pronounce it correctly. With a lot of help from Glenys Lloyd we began to tackle the Welsh alphabet – a vital first step. We plan to look into a couple of online Welsh language sites and investigate what books are available to support our studies. The aim is not to be able to speak Welsh fluently but to pronounce local place names confidently and hopefully be able to greet someone appropriately. Second Book Group There’s been such a growing demand for the Book group that a second book group has formed. This new group called the Oswald Book group, will meet on the last Wednesday morning of the month at 10.30 a.m. at Table Table (by Mile End roundabout). The Group Leader, Jenny Wilbraham comments - ‘We are already approaching peak capacity but please contact me if you are interested.’. In January the group read The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2012. A variety of other novels has been suggested and we will be making our choice for the next two months at our first meeting. If the group wishes, we will read biographies, or perhaps other genres of non-fiction.