Wings, Roundels & Flights
Regions & Roundels, A New Venture For The Society
Page last updated on Wednesday, 20-Jan-2010
 |
A Message from our chairman Sqn.Ldr Leonard Dickson LVO
The Society built up it's membership very quickly in the early days and the country was divided into Regions with a Regional Chairman who formed up a committee in the area. Even with this development, it was always difficult to engage members across a Region closely with the Society distances were too great for regular meetings over such widely dispersed areas.
Over the years a number of Regions ceased to function and the country has now been divided in to East and West each with an Area Co-ordinator to oversee events and happenings where members may be brought into contact with one another on a regular basis
So what makes for an entirely different approach which, we hope, will give us a chance of getting members together right across the country? The membership team have now been able to analyse the distribution of members throughout the country, using our database to match member's addresses with the 121 postcodes that span the country.
(Big Brother is watching you!). And, of course, we can see places now in some detail where there are 'pockets' with a substantial number of members but we have never before found a convenient way of getting likeminded people together. We now think it quite possible to do this which could be a major move forward for the Society.
What we propose is a new venture to be called 'Spitfire Roundel Clubs'.
This is really nothing more than an expansion of what we know is already running in various places.
Groups of members getting together at some convenient location and time at a pub, a hotel, a community centre for a drink, a meal, arranging for an interesting speaker, visits to interesting places and a Christmas lunch!
We have, for example, a group in the Biggin Hill area who meet monthly at the 'Old Jail Public House' (where else!), Norman Parker and Jenny Smith run a group near Salisbury who meet for lunch at a variety of interesting places across Wiltshire.
In short, we are simply proposing that we expand on the lines of what is being done in enormous numbers by the likes of Rotary, Lions Clubs, Probus and many others who meet monthly all over the country with a common interest and, surely, we have our icon the Spitfire.
So what can we do and, much more important, what can YOU do?
---- No Group close to you? Start your own ----
We are asking now for any member anywhere to come forward and offer to start up a local group.
Because of the Data Protection Act, we are not permitted to disclose member's addresses without their permission but what the membership team can do is to send out details to all people living within, say a 15/20 mile radius of the member offering to start up a club. It is then hoped that contact can be established with the new 'club' organiser and the scheme should take off.
There are no catches, no fees to the Society; indeed, we want the minimum bureaucracy but we would offer a small grant as a start-up contribution to cover phone/postage or an advert in a local paper to attract Spitfireminded individuals to join in and perhaps increase our membership.
Anyone interested simply has to get in touch with Colin Uzzell or John Perrett by an initial letter to
PO Box 202, by email to memsec@spitfiresociety.com, or a phone call to Colin 07506 628434 to set their ball rolling.
As we develop the project, it will then be easy to allocate clubs to an appropriate Area and invite them to keep the Area Co-ordinator up to date with information on what is going on in their local area. We can begin to build up a composite picture of activities round the country, especially now that so many people have the internet for communication.
As the scheme multiplies, we will be publishing a 'directory of Clubs' in the Journal and we will most certainly want to discuss progress at the next AGM. May we ask all members now to think about how to get a network of Clubs starting up all over the country really, at long last a chance for those interested in the Spitfire anywhere to get together?
So could it be 'Team Spitfire' !!!??...
Ladies and Gentlemen, the floor is yours
LD
