View From The Chair, March – Time To Co-operate

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As spring approaches so does our Annual Gathering, and in the last week the first convening notice for the Annual Gathering and Conference was sent out to all members.

This year we have implemented a time-sensitive booking system – this means that the sooner you book, the cheaper your conference will be.

We are doing this as we need to know who is coming so we can cater for you. The fees we charge continue to only cover the actual conference equipment hire, while the General Council pays directly for your food, camping fees and evening entertainment. We do this because we believe that keeping the price as low as possible is important to the democracy of the folk.

General Council meets every other month to think about our movement, how best we should move forward and how to support young people, adult members and staff.

We met in February and you can see a summary of what we discussed on the Woodcraft Folk website.

Something we are all committed to is encouraging members to stand for General Council positions. We are all too aware that the General Council must represent all our members – white or black, young and old, parent or leader.

We will support people to stand for the council, not only by providing childcare for those that need it, but we are also trying to encourage different ways of getting involved from day meetings, to online consultation. If you want to talk about coming on to council then I encourage you to get in contact with myself or any other council member to find out what it’s all about: http://www.woodcraft.org.uk/directory/12

I am keen for us to strengthen our links to the co-operative movement and in particular Co-operatives UK and The Co-operative Group in the coming year. While in many national committees, co-operative members know of the Woodcraft Folk, but it is my desire that we should be known in every co-operative outlet, throughout the co-operative movement, as its young pioneer organisation leading the way with a generation of young co-operators.

I would like to see us in every co-operative shop, bank and on the lips of every co-operator in the country.

That is why it’s so important that members who can, join and get active in local co-operatives. While I encourage you to find your local cooperative and join it (you can find it on-line here: http://www.cooponline.coop), you can also do something today – join The Co-operative Group and start to have a say how the world’s largest consumer cooperative works: http://www.co-operativemembership.coop/joinnow

While we can all do things individually, it’s our co-operative education that makes us important and there are loads of resources for people to run group nights about co-operatives on our websites: http://www.woodcraft.org.uk/resources/pioneer/co-/co–links.htm and http://www.globalvillage2006.org/en/find_out_about/co_operatives

While there is too much going on for me to mention everything, I wanted to particularly draw your attention to two documents. One is our new camping guidelines, which are for use by any member camping on a site that is not an official campsite.

Chris Pyke has been working on these, and they have been temporally adopted preceding a wider review of our camping guidelines and actives.

The other guide is the new resource called “All Together”. It is a project that Woodcraft Folk have been working on along with other European IFM-SEI organisations for a number of years.

The product is an amazing resource – everyone should read it and get inspired. It brings together our inclusion work and is for groups from all backgrounds. A hard copy will be sent to all districts shortly, but you can download a copy now from http://www.woodcraft.org.uk/news/article/4367

Blue Skies

Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Chair of General Council
lloyd@woodcraft.org.uk and 07899 785 265