Newsletter from your Chairman June 2020
Last week we had a meeting of our U3A committee to discuss the current situation and a possible way forward.
As you can see from the photo this was not held in Crockham Hill village hall but by “zoom”.
This month is when all annual memberships come up for renewal and the July meeting is when we traditionally hold the Annual General Meeting. COVID-19 regulations mean that we cannot hold the meeting in public in July so, as a committee, we have decided to defer the meeting until such time when it would be possible to physically meet. We did decide on other issues related to the AGM and I summarise these below:
- It will be too difficult to offer a refund to all members for the period March to June 2020 when events and meetings had to be cancelled because of the pandemic.
- We agreed that we will not ask for annual subscriptions for 2020/21 until we are in a position to meet and attend normal group events.
- Your subscription for 2020/21 will be adjusted downwards to reflect the situation from March to June 2020 and any other situations that may arise.
- Despite the above you will still receive the U3A quarterly magazines from head office funded by our Edenbridge group.
- Membership cards will be procured and distributed when we are able to start meeting again.
- Our ongoing programme of meetings and speakers will be resumed as soon as lockdown restrictions are eased.
- We have not been billed for any hall expenses during the lockdown period.
Your Committee:
Our secretary, Cathy Booth, earlier this year had announced that she wished to stand down at the AGM, and this remains the case. All other committee members indicated they were willing to continue into 2021.
Earlier this year Lynne Joiner had expressed a wish to join our committee and, had the lockdown not occurred, this would have happened. She is still keen to join and has expressed her willingness to take on the role of secretary. Cathy has offered to help with the transfer process, and we are all very grateful for that.
Finally – at last the number of daily deaths from COVID-19 seems to be on the decline. I want to reassure you that we will not initiate any return to meetings, groups meeting in homes etc. until we are absolutely sure that they can be conducted in a safe manner. We remain both vigilant and alert to the current situation that we all find ourselves in.
Stay safe and we will get together some time in the future but at the moment I can’t say when.
Previous editions of our newsletter can be found in the Newsletter archive