Women’s Institute

Contact Details

Secretary:

Lindsey Smith

Telephone: 015242 51649
E-mail: lindseyinaustwick@gmail.com

President:

Angela Rogers

Telephone: 01729 823218
E-mail: angela_john@ringmat.com

After more than a year, it is with some relief that we can finally start to think about WI activities. If the road map out of the Covid 19 situation continues, by May 17^th six people will be able to meet inside and we should be able to resume our coffee mornings and afternoon teas. By June 21^st hopefully we will be able to continue with our indoor meetings.

As with a lot of associations we have managed to keep in touch via Zoom. We have had some committee meetings which have been very successful. Two of our members have kept in touch via Zoom and we have had some interesting chats in small groups. Our last scheduled March meeting was led by Pam Smith and we had a quiz on puddings which was well received.

We began the first full meeting of the year with a zoom presentation. Sarah Lister had been our last speaker in March 2020 and she returned in April 2021 with her talk about the surprising revelations from the Settle graveyard. Her excellent talk about two Settle families, the Ellis family and the Slinger family revealed her findings about their very interesting lives. Fourteen members joined the meeting and we hope that more will join us in May.

We are very pleased and grateful for the support the local community has given to our work in aid of the Food Bank and our thanks go to Michelle and Iain for their magnificent help with this. Since January we have been supporting the Food Banks nearer to home in Ingleton, Clapham and Austwick and in March £520 was raised which enabled Michelle to buy 40 Easter Eggs and various mini eggs.

Following on from the gifts of bulbs and Christmas chocolates distributed last year, Debra Russell and her daughter Fiona made an Easter card and bookmark for all our members.

We are still keeping in touch via our monthly newsletter, as well as via our WhatsApp group, where members are sharing photos and their news with each other.

Our second meeting of the year was a zoom presentation entitled ‘Bite-sized’ by Joanna O’Neill. Joanna showed us examples of her work and talked about her art quilts and embroidery which is on a friendly scale often A4 or smaller in size.