Surrey Branch

 

 

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Surrey Branch Report 2011

2010/2011 Annual Report: Surrey Branch Retired Teachers Association
The Surrey Branch has continued with the expectations of members to host five luncheons and a brunch each year, though rising costs at our current location have made this a little less desirable for some members, and some alternatives are being considered. We launched “Coffee Mornings” in the spring of this year: smaller meetings
with a speaker, serving only coffee, tea and snacks as desired. Our first such event, with Gerry Tiede speaking about Extended Health changes, drew forty-six members. The success of this meeting has led us to incorporate the idea into our planning for the coming year. We found that many of those who attended the coffee morning were not the same folk as attend the luncheons, so we the addition of that programme may extend our reach to some of our (so-far) less involved members.

We are a very large district, with 861 members at our last count, and still growing. This poses very specific problems as well as advantages. Of those members, all receive our newsletter, the Chatter, and about one hundred or more attend the luncheons. We have one very active committee, Heritage, which is making great strides in establishing storage and cataloging for the extensive archival collection that Trudy Rutherford had gathered for many years. We also are actively involved in COSCO, thanks to the leadership of Bruce Summer and the support of a few other members. We would like to see this side of our work grow further in the future.

Communications are difficult and very important in a district of our size. We have an excellent newsletter in the Chatter, edited by Lorraine Eliott, and that is now available online to about a third of our members who have signed up for that form of delivery. Wealso have an excellent telephone tree network under the steady guidance of Mollie Hedley. Our Sunshine person, Karen Bentzen, has kept in touch with phone calls and cards to offer support to those who are ailing or grieving.

We continued our scholarship and bursary programme, offering funding to Earl Marriott, Semiahmoo and Elgin Secondary students. All funds were paid from our Surrey Foundation account, which continues in place as the interest-based monies are disbursed. Our funding priority this year has been to continue to build the principle in the foundation, so that larger scholarships will be available in future years.

Change in our organization is inevitable as time goes on, and our challenge is to hold on to those things that are of value while welcoming the adaptations that keep us strong. We feel that this past year has seen the beginning of that evolution, and hope for a continued vitality in the coming years.

Respectfully submitted,
Helen McFadden, President

 

 

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