At our May meeting Janet Patterson, one of our members, gave us a talk about her 24 years volunteering for the Save the Children charity. Her work started when she was a member of Greysouthen WI in the Lake District. Some of the WI members there volunteered at the Save the Children shop in Cockermouth and this prompted her to give it a go as well. The Save the Children charity was started in 1919 by Eglantyne Jebb and her sister Dorothy Buxton as a one off response to the starving children in Austria and Germany after the First World…

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At our April meeting on Zoom we had Angela McIntyre talk about her career working with the Homeless. It started thirty years ago when as part of an organised group, she would go once a week to help feed the homeless in Manchester with sandwiches etc.  This led to doing voluntary work at Cornerstones in Salford; a day centre for the Homeless. Very soon after starting she was persuaded to apply for the post of Deputy and stayed working there for 25 years. People in need are given a welcome breakfast of tea and toast together with the option of…

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At our March meeting via Zoom we had 28 members listening to an interesting talk given by Fenella Lipkin from a local Podiatry Clinic. As caring for our feet is something we all need to do, we found it very helpful to have many of common problems explained and to be given possible solutions and treatments. There was a Q&A session followed by a short feet related quiz. Our sub groups continue to be well attended and Joan hopes to start a new one on Local History very soon. We hope soon that some of our events and activities such…

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Chris our President welcomed 30 of us to our Zoom monthly meeting. It was also Whitley WI’s 83rd birthday so we were all encouraged to bring a small cake to the meeting and also send in photos of birthday / special occasion cakes that we had made in the past. Our speaker for the evening was Dr Caroline Eames who talked about her 33 year career as a Forensic Scientist, giving many fascinating examples.  Much of the work is based around Locard’s Exchange Principle; every contact leaves a trace of themselves at the scene while simultaneously taking something from the…

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To show our support for this campaign we decided to decorate our tree at the Nature Reserve at Raddel Lane. It has certainly become a talking point by those who walk past . Many thanks to Annette for making these lovely green hearts and for putting them in place. At our monthly meeting on Feb 4th Gill Alcock our Climate Change Ambassador laid out other ways in which Whitley WI could raise public awareness and ask for changes.

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Whitley WI hit the ground running with our first monthly meeting of 2021 on Thursday 7th January. Not to be stopped by Covid, we are now using Zoom rather than meeting at our village hall. Chris and Melanie informed us of the many and varied events available to our members in the next few months; please see our calendar for details (http://www.whitleywi.org.uk/index.php/events/ ). We then had a fascinating talk by Jen Quayle titled “Tales from Mongolia”. Jen spends at least one day a week at Knowsley Safari Park and through her work there was given the opportunity to go to…

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From March to June, a snapshot of Whitley WI in isolation.

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After the success of our last walk to Daresbury we decided that we would do another socially distanced walk; but this time around Marbury Park. Not being put off by a little bit of rain we walked around the park before finding a suitable spot to get out our picnics and camping chairs for lunch. Luckily for us the rain had stopped by then. After lunch some of us continued walking along the canal to the Anderson Boat Lift where at the café coffee and ice creams were bought. On the canal we saw a number of narrow boats selling…

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