Committee News

If you can’t think of a better way of spending a glorious sunny afternoon than at an MS Branch Committee meeting then you need serious medical advice. But attend we did at the Riverside Centre on the 12^th May, this being my first meeting I was flitting around some teenager on their first date trying to make sure everything went well and all in all I think it went OK. That is if you disregard noise from the ball room dancing classes the other side of a flimsy partition and the guy in the loft space above our heads rewiring with a very large hammer making thinking let alone intelligent conversation a challenge.

 

In my opening remarks I welcomed everyone to the meeting and said how I felt that we all had own areas of expertise or interests that are dear to our hearts and that by concentrating on what we enjoy and are good at was the key to a successful group of volunteers. Where as my job tended to be one of co-ordinating the group and to pick up on what jobs we were unable to do.

 

As with all meetings the bulk was taken up with reporting back on mundane matters such minibus maintenance and problems with arranging carers – but never the less the important things which if some one doesn’t do then the services we provide which we all take for granted just wouldn’t exist.

 

One area that raises cause for concern as always is fundraising and at our next meeting we will be setting aside a good part of our time to brain storm schemes to see how we can improve our finances because as horrible a thought as it is we are in competition with other Island charities for the small amount of funds the man in the street has to donate to worthy causes.

 

We have been lucky enough to have some fresh volunteers put themselves forward to help with branch activities but we still need more volunteers to work in the sop even if just for a couple of hours a week.

 

Other items up for detailed discussion at the next meeting will be a questionnaire to fin out what MS suffers on the Island really need and whether we can arrange an MS Information day for September this year as we have done in previous years.

 

We will also be looking to start planning for our 40^th anniversary celebrations so if anyone has any bright ideas for a shin dig or historical photos or papers then please get in touch.