< Click on the picture to play the video from Katrina

 

TRANSCRIPT
Hello, my name is Katrina Kemp and I am your Federation Chair for Hampshire County Federation, WI. I was elected in March and I thought it was about time I introduced myself.

So some of you may already know me, to some of you I may be a completely new face, but I have been on the Board of Trustees for six or seven years now and I have taken roles as Vice Chair, Treasurer and done various other jobs along the way.

Anyone that’s read the Hampshire News will know a little bit about me. So apologies if this is a repeat. But for those of you that haven’t met me and don’t read Hampshire News, I work in maritime industry, I have a family of three boys of varying ages which is always good fun and amongst other things I enjoy sewing and yoga. And for those of you that know me may also hear a little bit about perimenopause, cycling and other things that entice me to have a good rant on social media.

Sorry. Back to my role as Federation Chair, I really do want to try and visit you all and I’m very aware that previous chairs have been able to do this in their roles and capacity as Advisers and event leads and I will do my best. So far I have managed to be at the interest meeting that led to the establishment of the Rowanberries, Hampshire’s first Hospice based WI.

Most recently I managed to attend Bishopstoke WI’s 70th birthday. So please do invite me and I will do my best to attend. If I’m not available because of work commitments, family commitments etcetera, other trustees may come along but I will do my best to try and visit you in the meantime. I felt like maybe a regular hello in this format might also allow you to get to know me a bit better.

So the board have now been in place for a couple of months and we are settling in. We have big shoes to fill from some of our predecessors. One of the pieces of work that we have been tackling and that was started under Helen’s leadership was our strategy. So we have now published our strategy for 2024 to 2026 and this is available on the Hampshire Hub, which for those that don’t know is an internal site available to all our WI officers, giving them access to our policies, useful guidance, and in this case, our Hampshire strategy.

So what does it cover? It covers four key areas that we are going to be looking at and that we feel cover the functions and operations of us as a Federation and that will support you as Officers and as WI members. It covers membership, income and resources, WI House and communications.

I won’t go into the detail of what’s what’s in the strategy, but it is available to you both in a long version but also one page short version, summarising the different areas. We’ll be looking at the reasons we’ve got the strategy and what it means to you. We hope that what it will mean to you is that you’ll have events that you want. You’ll have better support for your WI officers. We might even get more members and we’ll have a welcoming member space at WI House and this is something we’re working on, so look out for more information on that coming soon.

We’ll also make better use of your subscription, simplifying the office processes where we can, and provide more support with new technology. We’re very aware that the Hampshire Hub is really helpful for people and having emails for individual WI officers is helpful, but it also comes with its challenges and we’re willing to work with everybody to make this easier.

And finally, we’ll also be looking at a magazine and promotion that actually reflects you as a membership and encourages new members to join us and the passion that we have for the organisation we’re all part of.

The trustees now are always willing to answer any questions, so please contact us either directly via emails, via the WI office or through Hampshire WI social media. Somebody picks up on the messages on there and we will get back to you.

In the meantime, we look forward to hearing from you and enjoy some sunny weather.