The Month That Was March 25

Supporting the RNLI

Our guest speaker this month when we met for supper at the Crown was Tony Brown from the RNLI, a charity many members of the club support in a private capacity. Although many Club members are quite familiar with the background to and the work of the RNLI in saving lives at sea, on in-shore waters and around the UK coast line, it was an excellent refresher for us and, what’s more, we learnt a little about one or two new aspects to the work of the RNLI.

Staffed mainly by volunteers, working 24 hours a day, whose primary concern is safety at sea, the RNLI still gets most of its funding through donations and legacies and remains independent of the government and the coastguard services.

Tony himself is a volunteer helping both with and sharing advice to help people, particularly young people, stay safe in and around waters. Overwhelmingly, most rescues these days are using inflatable ribs and within a few hundred meters of the shoreline.

All in all a very informative evening.

The March Business Meeting

It was pretty much a business as normal meeting with updates from the project teams on the upcoming projects scheduled for Q2 - Kids Out and the Wells Festival of Running along with an update on the discussions held with the Dairy House team re the proposal to look into assisting the charity in building an activity centre at their Chilcompton site. The Dairy House focuses on supporting the homeless and rough sleepers on the Mendips, which aligns with one of the prime focus areas of the Rotary organisation as a whole across he UK.

The proposal for a re-run of the Meet the Sikhs event on the Cathedral Green in August was discussed and concluded with the decision to put the decision on whether to stage or not to stage the event to a SVP vote of all members. The theme of the event is breaking down barriers and showing how different faiths

St Margaret’s Hospice

For the second half of the business meeting Kerry Baille and a colleague from St Margarets’ Hospice, Yeovil joined us, primarily to say thankyou for the clubs efforts in collecting used Xmas trees as part of a annual fund raising exercise organised and run by St Margarets.  Altogether the project raised over £30,000  for the hospice with Wells contributing over £1,500 to the total. It was concerning to hear just how big an impact the changes to NI and employment legislation will have on organisations such as St Margarets. Adrian Clifford gave the vote of thanks on behalf of the club.

Chew Valley Glass Making

A group from the Club met for coffee at New Manor Farm in West Harptree and then walked across the courtyard to the studio of Chew Valley Hand Made Glass. There they were each hand held through the process of making their own coloured glass paper weight by the very experienced and patient Steve and Angie.Following all the hard work the visit would up with lunch at the café.