Friday 15 June 2012

40 years on

 Well it has felt like a catch up week after the Jubilee weekend. We were sent brilliant pictures of Woking Sea Rangers at the Thames Pageant on the Albert Bridge and with the Sea Ranger cadets with Prince Harry - a great coup for them. The pictures are on our website.

More mundanely, I have written our Annual Report (and Accounts) for 2011/12 , so that we have the Report to hand rather earlier than in previous years to support grant bids. We will be producing a short popular version of it in colour as a marketing tool. Talking of marketing, we are delighted to announce that, subject to the approval of Trusteees on 31 July, Carol Brannigan will be joining the Board as an independent trustee, having just completed an appointment as interim Director of Marketing for KPMG Europe. Carol has a massively impressive CV and is about to cycle the Camino de santiago in Spain on a tandem with her husband. Walking the Camino is one of my main ambitions, so we have that in common. Carol will be a great asset to us, as she wants to be a "hands on" trustee. Great!

We are also pleased to say that Shelagh West has joined us a volunteer Volunteer Broker; Shelagh used to run her own IT company and then volunteered with the CAB for many years, so she is an ideal person to link between our member organisations and corporates / employers who may be looking for volunteering projects for their staff.

I had a useful mentoring session with my business mentor on Thursday morning, and this was followed by a joint meeting of the Surrey 14-19 Partnership Board with the Youth Justice Board. There were several interesting items - an Employability Plan (except that it didn't have any detail about what when, how) to encourage young people, especially NEETS into training and employment. I am convinced that our Surrey Youth Enterprise grant bid (still in progress) will hit the mark. Another intersting item was the product of focus discussions with  some 100 young people about their hopes and fears, and there were some very telling remarks. For some there is a sense that if they miss out at school, they are doomed...we must not let this impression take hold. We'll put the powepoint up on the website as soon as it's to hand.

Well we have a 40th wedding anniversary lunch party in the garden on Saturday (we have a marquee up) so we hope it doesn't rain...and that England beat Sweden tonight(Friday). We have 40 family and friends coming....and lots  of fizz! Have fun because I will!

Mike

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