2019 The Covid Years and Beyond
For many u3a’s the pandemic was devastating, websites displayed a sign explaining simply that they were closed until further notice.
We were thankfully in a good position financially and were able to give members a six-month payment holiday which moved our year end from August to March.
Epsom and Ewell were fortunate, as has been pointed out by Linda Hollands the chair at that time, that we’d recently elected a new vice-chair!
Tony Skelton had been elected in October 2019 and when the unthinkable happened in March 2020 and the country went into lockdown, he motivated our committee to make some swift decisions about how we would manage the situation.
Luckily Clive Hargreaves, our speaker liaison, came on board and the two of them worked out a way to entertain our members as best we could.
Obviously face to face monthly speaker events were cancelled as given the demographic of a lot of our members, they were in the vulnerable category, and lots had been advised to shield themselves and to form family bubbles and support networks.
Our committee were very thankful that so many of our members were on the internet as we could update them on our progress. It very quickly became apparent that the way forward was a little-known brilliant piece of technology called Zoom.
Lots of other u3a’s and the Third Age Trust embraced the technology and got to work on sourcing material that would work for our members using this platform. Lots of speakers started offering their talks via Zoom and we discovered a wealth of interesting content on YouTube.
The decision was taken to purchase a Zoom pro license for use by our u3a and by the beginning of July we were ready to re-engage with our members.
Obviously not all members were prepared to embrace this new concept but we had to do whatever we could to at least try to keep our u3a active for anyone who was interested and prepared to give it a go.
We notified everyone via email that our first talk would be A Grandmother’s Legacy and if they wanted to view the event, they needed to book a place in order to get the log in details and passcode. Gradually they started to request a booking and we were back up and running.
We also decided that a mid-month event might be appreciated and YouTube content was freely available. We found some very good videos ranging from historical, gardening, science etc, one very popular one was a four-part series about TV comedy through the ages starting with Tony Hancock. We showed part one which was really popular and members asked for part two the following month. We agreed, only to discover that the particular show we wanted had been removed from YouTube as someone had purchased the license for it. Sue Skelton sent them an email and explained why we’d like permission to view it for our u3a and asking how much it would cost, when they heard it was for a charity keeping pensioners amused during lockdown, they agreed we could show it free of charge and emailed a link.
The show was very well received and contained clips from many politically incorrect series such as Till Death us do Part, and Love They Neighbour, but also several from such classics as The Liver Birds, The Likely Lads and Butterflies.
Using the internet was not always plain sailing. Some speakers offered their talks but sadly proved not very adept at presenting. One memorable speaker wanted to show us pictures and his preferred way was to hold a photograph up to the screen, sometimes at very strange angles!
However, the worst moment was probably the day we had a packed audience waiting to watch Neil Sadler present Gongoozling.
Clive had finished the introductory slide show which he prepared for each event that played while members were being admitted to the talk. Tony had just welcomed the members and explained who today’s speaker was when the very common notice appeared on his screen, ‘your Internet connection is unstable’ followed very swiftly by a blank screen.
Luckily Clive was co-hosting and said, we appear to have lost Tony and then very professionally reintroduced Neil Sadler and everyone enjoyed a really good presentation except Tony and Sue who later discovered that a telephone engineer had disconnected the wrong line at the end of the road and cut their phone and internet connection off. The joys of new technology.
Some of our groups embraced the idea and a system was set up for them to book a slot using our u3a Zoom pro license to host their groups without worrying about the 40-minute time limit that Zoom imposed with the free version. Several of our groups are still using that facility in 2025.
Some of our walking groups wanted to meet on Zoom and just have a catch up and chat. Exploring London 8 led by Maureen Nortrop had several such meetings which included a short YouTube video for the first 10–15 minutes that were presented by some blue badge guides as their way to entertain people who couldn’t currently visit London. We repaid the favour by engaging three of them for our social committee London event in January 2022 to Westminster.
We also had one memorable conversation with a lady member who was part of a walking group and wanted to join them on a Zoom meeting but couldn’t get the technology to work for her. Tony arranged to telephone her and sent her an email invitation to a private Zoom for just the two of them. He phoned and talked her through exactly what to do on her computer to access the Zoom link and how to open it so that she could join him on Zoom. It took almost an hour but by the time they finished he had very patiently talked her through the whole process and she ended up on a face-to-face conversation with him. She was thrilled.
Our monthly speaker returns for September 2021.
Restrictions were still quite tight and the committee did lots of planning to get this meeting right. The decision was taken to move our speaker event to a different room but still at Bourne Hall. We moved to the main hall which is downstairs. It has far greater capacity and high ceilings so we arranged to have the chairs spaced far apart and limited the numbers for this first meeting. We also decided to serve refreshments which we thought about very carefully. There are no washing up facilities at Bourne Hall so we took the decision to ask members to bring their own cups, this also made them feel more comfortable about the hygiene issue of reusing cups. We made sure that sugars were in individual sachets and mini packs of biscuits were purchased in order to make everyone feel as safe as possible. Our newly formed Really Useful Group swung into action, Sue Russell and Marion Bollans on teas, and Cynthia Rogers and Elaine Raven on meet and greet to make sure everyone knew where to go.
The system worked really well, Peta Hargreaves our membership secretary was on the reception desk checking people in, loads of hand sanitiser bottles placed at strategic points and members were advised to wear masks if they felt more comfortable that way.
From January 2021 we were able to offer Hybrid meetings for members unable to come to Bourne Hall because they were still shielding. We were very grateful to Nick Cook who is a friend of a member’s son and just happens to be a very good sound engineer, he advised the best inexpensive equipment to purchase and actually arrived for the first two hybrid meetings to assist with the set up on his way to work.
With our members embracing the new normal our speaker meetings started to fill up, our groups were beginning to restart and our social events were restarting.
Our Website
Over recent years many things have changed. The website that was built for us by Nescot was replaced by Sitebuilder which was a website built specifically for u3a’s by u3a volunteers. It was quite basic but very simple to use and update and easy for members to learn to manage who had no previous experience of this type of technology.
Things were running very smoothly until 19th November 2022 when overnight 700+ u3a’s suddenly discovered that their Sitebuilder website had crashed. The reason given was that the company that hosted all the websites had some issues that the Third Age Trust were trying to resolve.
Gradually over the next couple of weeks things started to return to ‘normal’ but many u3a’s, including our own, had lost substantial amounts of historic data.
Tony Skelton set about finding a way to deal with this problem and contacted some members of the ‘Let’s Talk Tech’ team.
They are a group of u3a volunteers from across the United Kingdom, who set up a Facebook group during lockdown to assist with u3a’s learning about the new technology that was required to keep your u3a up and running using programmes such as Zoom.
They were really helpful and pretty soon we had a new website up and running. Our hosting, which is something all websites need was done by a company called Brixly who very kindly host registered charities free of charge so our only cost was about £10 for our new domain name.
In the meantime, the Third Age Trust were busily trying to get a team of volunteers together to build a new website platform which they would make available to all u3a’s as Sitebuilder had been. This new platform is called Siteworks. Tony decided that he’d wait and see how that progressed before signing our u3a up to the programme as we had a perfectly acceptable WordPress website that our members were getting used to accessing.
In January 2025 the Third Age Trust announced that their programme had been successful and there was now a new platform for u3a websites and 700+ had signed up to use it. Having looked closely at the new offering Tony spoke to the committee at their January 2025 meeting and it was agreed that he would move our website over to the new platform. Fiona Bath our secretary filled in the necessary forms and Tony and Sue Skelton began work on the new Siteworks website which we agreed to launch in early 2025.
Members Data
In 2018 Epsom and Ewell u3a made some significant changes in the way that we store and use members details. The Third Age Trust have a system called Beacon, which the committee decided we would start to use.
This system is compliant with all current GDPR regulations and the first thing that was loaded onto this system was all our members details. This then enables us to contact all members really easily using a bulk email process that means that each member receives an email but their details are not divulged to anyone else, effectively a mass BCC function.
Wendy Clubb as membership secretary had the huge task of transferring all the data for approximately 1000 members. This has made the work of subsequent membership secretaries a lot simpler to manage.
The Beacon system also enables us to set up groups with a leader and a list of all their members. We have been liaising with the Beacon team on the best method of allowing our group leaders to access the data for their groups whilst still complying with GDPR. They have now explained how we can set this up and that facility will soon be available to group leaders.
When David Leggett our treasurer passed away Sue Skelton was elected to the role of treasurer and she soon discovered that the Beacon system could also be used for our financial accounts so she immediately set about transferring all our accounts on to Beacon. The Charity Commission have a very good template that can be downloaded by charities for their end of year returns and the data from Beacon is very simple to transfer on to their template ready to submit to our AGM and subsequently load on the Charity Commission website.
This has proved to be very successful and hopefully successional planning for the role of treasurer will seem less onerous to the next incumbent.
Group Coordinators
Post Covid we were able to resume our annual Open House showcase. Jenny Powell and Brenda Griffiths organised our May 2022 event and it was very successful. We even invited the Mayor Peter O’Donovan who thoroughly enjoyed his morning and spent quite a bit of time talking to various group leaders and was amazed at the array of different interests represented. He especially enjoyed talking to Bernadette Hurcombe our Belly Dancing group leader and demonstrated that he could sway his hips.
Our 2023 event was slightly quieter but by 2024 we had a new Group Coordinator, Libby Curzon who has proved to be very proactive in her role.
Our 2024 event included performances by our Songbirds Group led by Karen Englefield, and our Singing for Pleasure Group led by Jenny Sparrow who were accompanied by our Ukulele group led by Sue Overy.
Our Regency dance group came suitably attired to represent the era, very Pride & Prejudice or Bridgerton and proved to be very entertaining.
The refreshments table run by Sue Russell and Tina Stout was next to the performance area and was also popular.
The committee received excellent feedback from members, some commenting that they had stayed far longer than intended as the event had been so good.
Social Outings post Covid
Irene Moore was our social secretary assisted by Hannah Dowling. As we emerged from lockdown our first outing for 2021 was to Frogmore Paper Mill, this was a trip that Sue Wood and Rosie Cooper had planned pre-covid but had to be deferred due to lockdown, it was lucky that we went when we did as subsequently, they’ve had a bad fire so are currently closed. That was followed by a coach trip to Swanage, a couple of walking trips around London to the Inns of Court and to Westminster Abbey each with Blue Badge guides. We finished the year with a coach trip to the Brick Lane Music Hall with a meal. Some events we only took half a coach as members gradually got back to feeling comfortable in crowds.
In 2022 we had a packed itinerary, we were probably trying to cram in the events that had been on hold for a while. Our coach trips went to Kenwood House, Bletchley Park, The Hari Krishna Temple, Knightsbridge Barracks, Kempton Steam Museum, Chatsworth House, Neasden Temple and Rochester. We had ticket only events to Mansion House, Secret London and two trips to Reigate Caves. A group of members enjoyed a day out at Headley Clay Pigeon shooting range and we had a Jubilee lunch and a Christmas Party.
For 2023 the first half was covered by Irene who arranged Sandhurst Academy, Sezincote House, Woodham Living Village and our Coronation Lunch.
The second half of the year was arranged by the Social Committee made up of Marie Butler, Ellen Wheeldon, Tina Stout, Fiona Bath and Sue Skelton (along with John Butler, David Wheeldon and Tony Skelton) who each took responsibility for liaising with a venue.
We entertained members with a blue badge guided Loo Tours Walk and talk, a coach trip to the Weald & Downland Museum, a Quiz Night held at the Station Pub in Stoneleigh with our quiz master Barrie Upton and his wife Ann checking our answers, and we finished off the year by taking two coachloads of members for a Christmas lunch at Hever Castle and a chance to look around the castle and after lunch to see the Christmas light displays and heading home before the evening got too chilly.
Our 2024 offering was a brilliant mixture of quite different events.
We started with a trip to Amberley, followed through the year with the Thames at War lunch river cruise when we were blessed with beautiful weather. We returned to Hever for lunch and to enjoy Hever in Bloom, then a lovely day out to Brighton with a self-guided tour of the Pavilion and a chance to wander along the front in the sunshine.
Next was a trip to the Crossness Pumping Station which sold out in 48 hours, we’d been unsure about how many members would enjoy a Sunday wandering around a sewerage pumping station but our fears were unfounded.
We finished our coach trips for the year with a trip to Winchester, a tour of the Cathedral and a chance to do some shopping at the Christmas Market.
Our Rochester Dickensian Festival had to be cancelled due to Storm Darrah causing chaos.
Our other events for the year included a trip to Reigate Caves which always proves popular.
We booked tickets for the Speakers Apartments in London for a guided tour and quickly realised that we needed to book more, we eventually booked 86 tickets on four separate dates for members to enjoy.
The most popular event of the year however was the Baitul Futuh Mosque at Morden which Marie Butler arranged with Farukh and his team. We had over 100 members, split into six groups.
The Social Committee are currently planning for 2025.
AGM 2024
At our AGM several committee members finished their term in office, namely Tony Skelton, Peta Hargreaves and Clive Hargreaves, and new committee members were elected.
We have a new chair, Sybi Trowsdale, a new vice-chair, Rachel Raywood, and a new membership secretary, Pam Buckmaster who will all bring new ideas to our u3a.
For our 2025 AGM we will have quite a few committee members finishing their term in office.
We are now actively seeking members who would like to shadow a committee member with a view to standing for election in October 2025.
The term in office for committee is three years and it can be very rewarding as well as interesting.