Volunteers Meeting 19th January & Kesgrave Market

This weekend proves what a hardy, loyal and good hearted bunch of volunteers we have. What a brilliant turnout to our first volunteers meeting of 2013, despite the weather! Our four new volunteers met our founder volunteers and we had an action packed meeting. First a talk from Garry and Catherine about the Warm Homes, Healthy People Scheme being promoted by the Rural Coffee Caravan Information Project; then twenty minutes of role playing a neighbour’s telephone enquiry, for the benefit of our new volunteers, and finally a round up of news and some discussion on fund raising, gritting and the year ahead.

Carry and Catherine had a table at Kesgrave Market, earlier on in the morning and did a roaring trade giving away mugs, slippers, rubber bottoms for walking sticks, kindling and a host of other things. They also took plenty of bookings for a Warm Homes survey – free advice from trained consultants on how to keep warm at minimum cost. And, even better, they also managed to recruit a new volunteer for the Kesgrave Good Neighbour Scheme!

Warm Homes, Healthy People have a sizeable budget to spend before the end of March to help those who need it most to keep warm this winter. They’re doing Road Shows all over Suffolk and often share venues with a number of other helpful organisations. If you can make it, they’re well worth a visit. Below are some useful links:

Warm Homes, Healthy People 

Rural Coffee Caravan Information Project

BBC Radio Suffolk Promotes Good Neighbours

Many thanks to the lovely Mark Murphy (even lovelier in the flesh!) for inviting us onto his show to talk about the Kesgrave Good Neighbour Scheme, alongside Nat Bocking from Suffolk ACRE who told Mark about Suffolk Good Neighbour Schemes in general.

Here’s Jane, our Chairman waiting for the call and following in the golden footsteps of Len Goodman, the Strictly Come Dancing chief of judges, who spoke passionately on Mark’s show earlier about looking after our neighbours. We all used to do it well but we’re not so good at it now so we hope our scheme will help everyone in Kesgrave to do this a bit better. Well done to Nat, who took Jane’s photo, for angling it so that her head obscured the word in green on the poster behind. Jane wasn’t quite so diligent with Nat’s photo and the whole word is revealed next to his head shot. The poster is about one of BBC Radio Suffolk’s many successful campaigns – “Don’t be a Tosser”!  Guess which is the big word in green?!

If you listened to more of Mark’s show afterwards you will have heard about a really successful volunteer gritting scheme already happening in Stowmarket and Sudbury and that’s our next piece of research. If you listen regularly to BBC Radio Suffolk you’ll find out that there’s a lot more going on in the community than you might have thought!

You can listen again to our chat on Mark’s show by following this link: Kesgrave Good Neighbour Scheme on Mark Murphy Radio Show It starts at 2 hours 28 mins 50 seconds. You can only listen again for seven days from the broadcast but if you’re reading this afterwards, Suffolk Acre have put the audio up on their website. Click on this link http://www.suffolkacre.org.uk/main.php/news/269

Volunteer Meeting 19th January 2013

Warm Homes, Healthy People are coming to talk to us at our volunteer meeting at 12 noon in the Pavilion, Kesgrave Community Centre, opposite the tennis courts. We’ve also got them a table at Kesgrave Market from 9am to 12 the same day so that more Kesgrave residents can find out about what they can offer to keep our homes warm. Anyone interested in finding out more about the Kesgrave Good Neighbour Scheme is very welcome to come along to the first 15 minutes of our meeting. Volunteers can find out what’s in store for 2013, hear some good news about funding and future visitors, and help shape our plans for the year.