WI Meeting Minutes
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January 2020 |
The first meeting of 2020 saw us gathering in the village hall to catch up with old friends, meet new members and welcome visitors as we raised a glass of fizz to toast health and happiness in the New Year.
Next K led us in a discussion of this year’s resolutions so that we could make an informed choice about which one to vote for. Our votes are then passed to the national organisation and will lead to the next national WI campaign.
First we looked at a call to increase potential stem cell donor registration. We learned that there is an urgent need to increase the number of people registered on the aligned UK stem cell registry in order to provide potentially life-saving treatment to people of all ages with certain blood cancers.WI members could promote registration to the database to avoid people dying whilst waiting for a match. The next proposed campaign related to female crash test dummies and was a surprise to us all.
Women are significantly more likely to die, or be seriously injured, in car crashes than men. The safety testing is done using ‘normal’ male dummies. The only woman test dummy is from the tiny 5th percentile and in the passenger seat! The WI would call on the government to mandate equitable testing with female crash test dummies to that of male dummies in regulatory vehicle safety tests; and for consumer organisations, such as EuroNCAP, to include a gendered breakdown in their published results.
The third proposed resolution concerns modern slavery.
There are tens of thousands of victims of modern slavery hiding in plain sight in the UK. Modern slavery has severe consequences for the health and mental wellbeing of survivors. The WI would call on the Government to protect victims of modern slavery in the first instance and deliver longer term support to help them rebuild their lives rather than the current 45 days maximum and a culture of regarding the victims as illegal immigrants. Our members would work to raise awareness of the prevalence of modern slavery throughout society and to campaign to defeat it.
We then discussed a difficult subject entitled Time to talk about death and dying.
64% of people in the UK think that we do not talk enough about death in this country, yet these conversations can be really helpful in enabling people to receive the end of life care they would want. In order to demystify a natural part of life, and support more people to share their wishes, the WI would upon members to encourage open discussions about death and dying.
Finally we looked at a proposal focused on protecting our precious helium.
We were interested to learn that Helium is a precious resource that is widely used in healthcare, medical and scientific research, but it is non-renewable and in short supply. The campaign would call on WI members to help raise awareness of the need to conserve helium, and on government and industry to work together to ensure it is used responsibly, and to support innovative research that could address the shortage such as reducing use or improving capture and recycling.
Discussion continued over refreshments and then we voted. All the proposals received support but in Trefonen the largest number of votes chose to raise awareness of the gender inequality in vehicle safety testing by advocating the proper use of female crash test dummies. Support for the victims of modern slavery was a close second. We’ll have to wait to see how the national vote goes.
Next month we meet on Thursday 6th February for the world famous Cheese Quiz. Visitors and new members are always welcome. Please contact Victoria for more details 07773364992.
Next K led us in a discussion of this year’s resolutions so that we could make an informed choice about which one to vote for. Our votes are then passed to the national organisation and will lead to the next national WI campaign.
First we looked at a call to increase potential stem cell donor registration. We learned that there is an urgent need to increase the number of people registered on the aligned UK stem cell registry in order to provide potentially life-saving treatment to people of all ages with certain blood cancers.WI members could promote registration to the database to avoid people dying whilst waiting for a match. The next proposed campaign related to female crash test dummies and was a surprise to us all.
Women are significantly more likely to die, or be seriously injured, in car crashes than men. The safety testing is done using ‘normal’ male dummies. The only woman test dummy is from the tiny 5th percentile and in the passenger seat! The WI would call on the government to mandate equitable testing with female crash test dummies to that of male dummies in regulatory vehicle safety tests; and for consumer organisations, such as EuroNCAP, to include a gendered breakdown in their published results.
The third proposed resolution concerns modern slavery.
There are tens of thousands of victims of modern slavery hiding in plain sight in the UK. Modern slavery has severe consequences for the health and mental wellbeing of survivors. The WI would call on the Government to protect victims of modern slavery in the first instance and deliver longer term support to help them rebuild their lives rather than the current 45 days maximum and a culture of regarding the victims as illegal immigrants. Our members would work to raise awareness of the prevalence of modern slavery throughout society and to campaign to defeat it.
We then discussed a difficult subject entitled Time to talk about death and dying.
64% of people in the UK think that we do not talk enough about death in this country, yet these conversations can be really helpful in enabling people to receive the end of life care they would want. In order to demystify a natural part of life, and support more people to share their wishes, the WI would upon members to encourage open discussions about death and dying.
Finally we looked at a proposal focused on protecting our precious helium.
We were interested to learn that Helium is a precious resource that is widely used in healthcare, medical and scientific research, but it is non-renewable and in short supply. The campaign would call on WI members to help raise awareness of the need to conserve helium, and on government and industry to work together to ensure it is used responsibly, and to support innovative research that could address the shortage such as reducing use or improving capture and recycling.
Discussion continued over refreshments and then we voted. All the proposals received support but in Trefonen the largest number of votes chose to raise awareness of the gender inequality in vehicle safety testing by advocating the proper use of female crash test dummies. Support for the victims of modern slavery was a close second. We’ll have to wait to see how the national vote goes.
Next month we meet on Thursday 6th February for the world famous Cheese Quiz. Visitors and new members are always welcome. Please contact Victoria for more details 07773364992.