Committee meeting synopsis

Meeting date: 19 March, 2018

With memories of snow now fading, our thoughts could turn to longer days and warmer walks. Planning for our Easter events A Potter round The Neatherd (PDF flyer, opens in new window) and MNR Yaxham walk (PDF flyer, opens in new window) are well under way, so it was only a matter of making final arrangements. All that remains is to hope for good weather, see the Event History section for reports after the events.

Like other organisations, we are aware of the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR for short), which update the UK’s data protection legislation in May. We are working on ensuring (as we already do) that we deal correctly and responsibly with personal information from our supporters and contacts. We will publish our policy soon, but in the meantime assure everyone on our mailing list that we keep their information secure, never pass it on or make it known to others without explicit permission to do so, and will remove it on request.

As planned, we had a presence at the MNR Model Railway Exhibition, as we had kindly been offered the opportunity to keep the proceeds of their 50/50 raffle. In spite of being the only non railway stall there (apart from the food and drink), we did get quite a bit of support, with 8 people joining our emailing list - and £75 for our funds.

We have been considering how to increase our local involvement and publicity. We are still adding to the list of businesses around the town that have taken our ‘Dereham Walkers are Welcome’ logos, and plan to purchase more of them for the future.

We have been pleased to support the developing About Dereham group (formerly meeting as Dereham Community and Voluntary Groups) and to have featured in the leaflet distributed, with the Dereham Memorial Hall programme, to 15,000 addresses in and around the town.

In an ‘extra to series’ venture, we are working on a town walk on 29 July. All is still open to confirmation, but the plan is for a walk round places of interest in the town, ending (as usual) with refreshments. The distance won’t be great, of course, with lots of stops to look and talk.

We have been pleased that many of the parishes around Dereham, which our new walks traverse, have agreed to take a stock of our walks, and to put links on their websites to ours. It all serves to get Dereham on everyone’s map.

One final item also gave us great pleasure. We have had feedback on our Annual Return (PDF, opens in new window), and were delighted to get a straight set of ‘greens’ for our work over 2017. Thanks to all of our supporters for their contributions to this.