Agnes, our President welcomed 80 members (including 1 new one) and 1 guest to the meeting. During our normal WI business, 2 members were successful in the draw for our 2014/15 Bursary for Denman College. We hope they enjoy their time at Denman. Members chose as our Charities of the Year 2015: Linden Lodge’s Acorn Family Centre Appeal and Macmillan Cancer Support (Merton). Members were very generous with donations to the Wimbledon Food Bank http://wimbledon.foodbank.org.uk, and with Christmas gifts, as well as blankets knitted by members of our Craft Club, to be delivered to our Charity of the Year 2014 Merton & Morden Guild http://mandmguild.org/WordPress/. A member who had recently been at Denman (courtesy of a Surrey Federation Bursary) was wearing examples of some of the jewelry she had made and recommended Denman http://www.denmancollege.org.uk to members. Congratulations to our Craft ladies had raised £535 to donate to the British Legion from the splendid poppies they had created. The Pottery Workshop had been a successful and fun event. We hope to see examples of the creations at our December meeting. Members expressed concern about the future of adult education in Merton and decided to sign a petition expressing their concerns.
Annual Meeting
At our Annual Meeting members ratified our new Wimbledon WI Constitution & Rules: the President and the Secretary subsequently signed these. Chris, our Treasurer presented our WI Financial Statement for the year to end September 2014, which was adopted by members. Ann, our Secretary presented the Committee’s Report for 2013/14, which was adopted by members. Agnes, our President, addressed the meeting for the final time before she stood down from that post and the Committee. She thanked named individuals on the Committee for all the work and planning that goes into providing such a varied programme of events. Agnes also thanked by name members who helped organize our various WI clubs/groups, as well as the organizer of our stall at Wimbledon Village Fair and the member who had found us premises to use for the Fair preparations. We gave Agnes a rose called “Happy Retirement” and Jennifer (who was also standing down) a bunch of flowers and thanked them for their work.
