Last year I wanted to join the new CamCity WI as many of my twitter friends went and it sounded like just the thing I needed – something for me rather than another volunteer activity where I looked after children for other people. I was quite willing to commute there from where I live in Hertfordshire as my local WI’s are on the ‘traditional’ side. However, my attempt was thwarted as they meet on a Wednesday which is one of the nights when I volunteer to look after other people’s children.
This led to a call to the Hertfordshire Federation WI to ask if there were any ‘next generation’ WI’s in the county I could join. I said I would commute for the right one, but I couldn’t run it. I was then told that there weren’t any (I think I was being sold a dud there!) but I could get some friends together to start my own. Appeals on twitter, interviews in the local paper and a meeting down the pub later and Puckeridge WI was born. Despite the assumption by others that I would become President, I was relieved when someone else stepped up, although I am now Vice President and Assistant Treasurer and a founder member of Puckeridge WI.
We are a small village WI with a membership of almost 30 aged in their 20’s through to their 70’s and are a mix of full and part time workers, mums and grans, and everything else in between. We have a great programme of activities, add on clubs are starting up, and we are getting involved in our community.
We had a request from county to be interviewed on BBC 3 Counties Radio which covers Beds, Herts and Bucks. They were doing a feature on the growth of WI membership and wanted to interview someone from a new WI to go with their pre-recorded feature on Royston WI. A lot of messages later, I agreed to do it if I could. So on a cold Monday at 8.25am in the car park of my doctor’s surgery, I called the switchboard.
I’d had lots of thoughts about what I would say (don’t mention bungee jumping, don’t mention bungee jumping), and while I was on hold, I could hear the show clearly down the phone. Iain Lee, the normal presenter, had car trouble that morning, so a replacement presenter had taken his place. Ruth Bond was being interviewed on the phone and I was told that the first thing I would be asked was about having men at WI’s, was it a terrible thing and do we sit and gossip about men all night?!!! Hardly sticking to the theme of the new, younger WI’s! In fact the whole interview seemed to try and reinforce the traditional ‘Jam and Jerusalem’ stereotype. I stood my ground and tried to keep to the general theme of cake, friends, opportunities and fun.
Listening back, I caught an interview with two women from Luton who have started a new WI, and they were again battling against the interviewer’s stereotyping of the organisation. The most disappointing bit was the pre-recorded segment at Royston WI which seemed to concentrate on one member’s 90th birthday, the opinion of a member that younger women should join so they can ‘learn how to behave’, and the repeated singing of Jerusalem.
Overall, I think it was a pretty poorly put together piece, although if people listened to the ladies from Luton and Ruth Bond, rather than the bias of the interviewer, they would’ve got the message of what the WI can actually offer nowadays. I’m still pleased to have done it, and I hope my enthusiasm for the WI has come across.
What a shame. I happened to mention in a village gathering that I was keen to join the WI and narrowly avoided being drafted in for the l local one – which is astonishingly traditional to the point of being scary!