WVA e-Newsletter January 2019

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Westcott Village Association e-Newsletter

January 2019

Your village needs you!

The January edition of the Village Magazine demonstrated how much goes on in the village, what an interesting mix of activities, clubs, and events happen here, and just how many lively, enthusiastic, and interesting people – young and old – live in our community.  Finding time to support events is the best way to ensure they thrive, and of course joining committees or doing things adds the extra dimension of shaping what happens in the village.  Through the What’s On section of the new village association website www.westcottvillage.com we will also do our best to keep you up to date with what is happening, so if you are planning an event or host a regular activity you would like to share with the village please do get in touch.

There are quite a few positions needing to be filled in the organisations behind some of these activities – the Village Association, the Hut, and the History Group being just three by way of example – and I again encourage you to make the time to help ensure they continue to thrive by stepping forward to fill one of the vacant positions.  As my mother used to say “many hands make light work” – although as I recall this related to all her children helping with the washing up!!

New ways of keeping in touch

Hopefully all our members enjoyed receiving our Christmas email wishing you Season’s Greetings.  We sent out 190 emails to members for whom we have email addresses.  27 unfortunately bounced back and we are working on rectifying this by checking the accuracy of the information we hold.  Please do keep us up to date with your correct email address as we are committed to improving how we communicate with our members and without filling up your inbox too often we want to ensure that when events are planned or we need to share information, we can reach as many people as possible. To update or add your email to our mailing list please send an email to membership@westcottvillage.com

The new Village Association web site will be up and running towards the end of January, please take a few moments to look on the new site once it is launched, which we have designed to make it easy to navigate and be more user friendly than the existing site.  We have also recently launched a Facebook page for the Westcott Village Association so please be sure to like and follow us on Facebook too. 

New constitution

The draft of the new Village Association constitution is being put together and we will shortly send this out to our members for them to consider and comment on.  If you are a member please read it, particularly the Association’s Objects, which govern what we do on your behalf, because this will determine how we do things in the future.

All members are invited to come and join us at our Open Meeting – Thursday 21stFebruary @ 7.30pm in Holy Trinity

The first of our four Open Meetings of this year, honouring our pledge to make the WVA more inclusive and consultative, is being held on Thursday 21stFebruary at 7.30pm in Holy Trinity.  All members are invited to come along and raise any issues you feel the Association needs to be tackling on your behalf.  The meeting will start at 7.30pm and conclude at 8.30pm when the committee will continue their regular formal meeting.  Knowing what you think, listening to your views and opinions, and understanding what is important to residents is what we need to do more of – it is one of the reasons why we are discussing running another Village Survey to ensure everyone gets to have a say.  We recognise that everyone leads busy lives and the easier we can make it for you to be heard the better. 

As a number of prominent citizens of the UK have said over the recent Christmas period however, we do need to remember to express what we want to say constructively, and to respect each other’s views and opinions even though they may not accord with our own.  Looking for the things, which we have in common, rather than focussing on our differences is the way to build strong communities.  We look forward to seeing as many residents as possible at the open meeting.

As always, you are invited to write to me on issues which concern you and the WVA will do their best to address them. 

Best wishes

Tim Way

Chairman, Westcott Village Association

timway.westcott@gmail.com