Volunteers’ Week 2019

Volunteers’ Week is a time to say thank you for the fantastic contribution volunteers make.

During the week, hundreds of events and celebrations take place across the country, saying thank you to volunteers and recognising their invaluable and diverse contribution to UK society

So what would we have missed out on without volunteers? Well London 2012, for a start, featured 70,000 voluntary Gamesmakers – the Games simply couldn’t have happened without them.

On a more local level, there are hundreds of thousands of volunteers making the little things happen – volunteer drivers, carers, guide/scout leaders, football coaches, and community building management teams to name but a few. Almost all of us will benefit in some way from someone volunteering their time free of charge.

And it’s great for the volunteers themselves – learning new skills, meeting new friends, it’s a fantastic way to enrich your own life at the same time as helping others, and is an important foundation of our society.  

Inspired? How can you help?

Our village hall provides a crucial locaiton for villagers (especially the elderly and vulnerable) to meet through Ladies’ Club, Hort Soc and various exercise classes during the week. We also run several social events a year including the extremely popular seniors’ Christmas lunch and children’s Christmas party. We fund much of the upkeep of the hall by hiring it out for children’s parties, weddings and other celebrations.

We need someone to commit a couple of hours a week to support our trustees and bookings secretary in ensuring that our facilities are maintained to the standard expected by our hirers. The role consists of checking the hall and grounds each week to make sure, for example, lights are all working, nothing is broken, no hazards to report. If anything does need flagging you would raise it with the committee so expenditure can be approved.

We’re also looking for a secretary (this is a Trustee position). You’d prepare an agenda for our monthly meeting plus take, circulate and keep a record of all minutes at the meeting. There may be a small amount of additional correspondence.

Finally we’d love some help with our online presence (website, facebook, twitter and monthly email) and quarterly newsletter. This would suit a sixth former or student looking for some experience in digital and print marketing and communications. You’d assist with writing and possibly layout and proofreading of the quarterly newsletter and monthly email, plus making sure all digital channels are kept ticking over and assist with targeted campaigns for particular events (for example the annual fête).  

If any of this is of interest please do get in touch: contact@bellingdon.com or speak to any of the committee.

Community association news

Bellingdon and Asheridge Community Association (BAACA for short) is up and running following our name change which was approved at the AGM. Our new trustees have got stuck in straight away and are helping us to deliver our many ongoing projects (see below for more details).

We are, however, still in need of a secretary. The role consists of compiling an agenda, circulating minutes and minimal amounts of additional correspondence. If you feel you might be able to help with this please contact any of the current trustees or contact@bellingdon.com

Village hall goes keyless

Those of you who have used the hall recently will have noticed a change in access arrangements. We’ve installed a keypad entry system in order to reduce the amount of time our volunteer bookings secretary has to spend giving out and collecting keys for the various hires during the week and weekend.

Some of the weekend hires do not finish until midnight, so making sure that the hirers have returned the keys on time is an onerous task, one which has been undertaken for the last seven years by the very dedicated Chris and Julie Hood.

Newsletter update

The December newsletter will be out shortly and looks a bit different. We thought that it deserved a bit of a refresh, and we hope you like the result!

We’d also like to start including more news of what people have been up to starting with the Spring edition next year, where we’re hoping to have news of an expedition to Nepal, among other things. If you and yours have an achievement you’d like to share (for example, new baby, marriage, leaving school, winning a prize, a “significant” birthday etc) do please let us know.

Floor refurbishment
During the Christmas period (16th-24th to be precise) the hall will be closed to enable a full refurbishment of our lovely parquet floor to be carried out. We hope that this will refresh the surface and make it easier to keep clean.

Christmas 2018 – what’s on in Bellingdon and Asheridge

There is a wonderful variety of Christmas activities available in the village this year – from the Children’s Party on 1st December and the Seniors’ Christmas Lunch on the 2nd to a community pub night on the 14th and “Welcome to Bethlehem” (children’s activities) in the church on Thursday 20th from 3-4:30pm.

There’s also a carol service at the church on Sunday 23rd (10am), the traditional Christmas Eve service at Huge Farm from 4pm (by kind permission of Anka and John Taylor) and a Christmas morning service at the church at 10am on the 25th.

Village Hall full for its 70th Birthday Party

What a fantastic afternoon! Around 100 people of all ages packed the Village Hall on Saturday afternoon to pay tribute to the place that this wonderful building holds within our community.

We had tea, sandwiches and cakes, an exhibition of recent and past history, an audiovisual slideshow of what has been going on at the hall in the last ten years, entertainment from The Nightingales and the opening of the refurbished kitchen by Alan Page.

Huge thanks to the hall management committee for funding the event, to the Bellingdon Belles for catering and to everyone who helped by lending us equipment for the slideshow as well as photos, articles and other artefacts for the exhibition. Particular thanks to Jane Edmunds for her sterling efforts in hammering pins into a particularly unwilling backdrop! And of course to Helen Harding for marshalling the whole thing even when it looked like climbing Everest might have been easier.

We’d love to hear what you thought of the event so please do let us know – either by talking to a committee member or by emailing us. We’re having a think about what else we can do to keep people coming to the hall so if you have any ideas – bingo, coffee morning, film night, karaoke etc – do let us know as well!

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