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CHAIRMAN'S BLOG 6
by Richard Thomas - 10:52 on 26 September 2012
CHAIRMAN’S BLOG 6
23 SEPTEMBER 2012
Last week was quite active. The Committee met on Monday (17th September), we had the General Meeting on the Thursday (20th) and on Saturday I was interviewed for about an hour for an article in Living Orkney which should appear in the December edition. As well as that I spent some time putting together the Power point show of photographs from the trips to Caithness and Stroma in June.
The main business of the Committee was to look at a draft Constitution I had prepared for the U3A. Something was put together in our early days but it seems to have been lost sight of so members felt that it was worth writing a new one from scratch. Well not exactly scratch. The U3A nationally has set up a set of model constitutions and so I was able to assemble the draft from there. They are designed to fit our position in Scotland as outwith the charitable scope of the Scottish Charities Regulator. The Committee members have read it through and once they have gone through the final draft, I will send it out to you all for you to read before we present it to the AGM for approval by the members. I will put a covering note on the particular points which you might wish to consider.
We are hoping to put the website on to the Scotland U3A directory of U3As. At the moment there is just a one page entry but pretty well all the other U3As in Scotland have comprehensive sites which are very interesting and I have to admit helpful in giving us ideas of what me might do for the programme of meetings next year and seeing whether we might see if there is any interest in setting up new groups here.
The Committee also gave some time to next year’s programme. We have some ideas for what we might do and members are contacting possible speakers so all being well we can have the programme ready by early next year. I hardly need add that if there is anything you might wish to put on the programme or if you have any ideas about things we might do, please let me or Pam know via the comments here, email, phone and indeed at the next meeting
Because one of our speakers sadly went sick, we have had to shuffle the programme around a bit and as a result next month’s meeting on 18th October will a talk from Neil Kermode of EMEC on marine renewables. This is quite timeous as there have been many developments in this area, not least the SSE decision to stop connecting wind turbines to the grid.
At the general meeting last Thursday, we welcomed 4 new members who, with those present, sat through a set of photographs from the Archaeology and Photography Groups’ 2 visits south to Caithness and Stroma. These will be put on to the website in the next few days.
While on the subject of Caithness, they have recently started their own U3A and we have made contact with them. We hope to run joint meetings and perhaps arrange some joint visits as well.
Finally, can I repeat the message in my last blog that if anyone is interested in sitting in on a Committee meeting, you would be most welcome to do so both out of interest and to see whether you might be prepared to be nominated at the AGM. If you’re interested catch me a one of the next meetings.
Richard
26 September 2012
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