This has been another
difficult year for our Branch, membership has declined, mainly among the youth
membership, and we have struggled to continue with a number of Branch
activities. It has proved impossible to maintain the annual UNICEF collections.
An increasingly elderly membership could not maintain local collections.
The Annual Church Service at
Trinity Methodist Church in Sutton was very enjoyable with Diana, John Chitty’s
widow and the two daughters of the late Edna and Herbert Syndercombe in
attendance and Lord Tope participating in the service.
On December 12th
the Mayor of Sutton and both M.P.s signed the Replica UN Universal Declaration
of Human Rights.
On January 31st
we held another Quiz Night at Old Coulsdon, hosted by our President, but this
unfortunately was not very well supported.
We held the final of the
annual Inter-school debating competition hosted by last year’s winners
Whitgift. The Past Mayor of Croydon presented the prizes to the Winners:
Whitgift
the Runners Up:
St.Philomena’s
and the best individual
speaker, Daniel Bregman (Whitgift)
The Branch decided to
subsidise the first year’s UNA-UK youth membership for the twelve members of
the six teams who reached the Final:
Whitgift, Trinity, Sutton
High School, St.Philomena’s, John Fisher and Christ’s Hospital.
Members attended the UNA UK
Conference on the Environment in London and
Peter Davis was our Branch delegate to the UNA UK Conference in
Edinburgh.
We also held our Annual
Summer Garden Party in Peter Ticher’s delightful garden in Epsom.
We have held regular
committee meetings and recruited a few new members. Branch membership stands at
around 116 with the youth members at only 15.
The popular inter school
debating competition is under way again for 2009-2010 but sadly a few more
schools have dropped out than usual due to increasing pressures on the
timetable and sometimes a change of the teacher responsible for debating.
Jas Weir Chair Purley with Sutton UNA Branch 20.9.2009