Waltham Forest

Groups

Due to the COVID-19 situation, General monthly meetings at Winchester Road are CANCELLED until further notice. However members at the AGM in August assured the Committee that there is significant support for online talks and we have now arranged these until at least April 2021. See the EVENTS page for more details.

Many groups are still in regular contact with each other by phone or email. So please do continue to talk to your Group Leader (or Lesley) to find out what's happening, to make a suggestion, or to just have a chat. We don't want anyone feeling lonely or socially isolated during this difficult time.

Update on Groups 20 December:
SADLY, the current situation (Tier 4 restrictions) means that groups cannot meet in person at all. Book Club and Poetry are meeting together using Zoom however. And Geography is about to do so as well. Get in touch with Lesley (or with members of those groups) for more details. And if you've got an idea for a new group along those lines, however small, she'd love to hear from you.

Would you like pair up with another person for local walks outside? This is still permissible under Tier 4 restrictions. These walks could be as modest or as challenging as the people concerned want to make them. And of course they can include a (socially distanced) cup of tea or a flask of coffee, with a chat. The aim is to maintain social contact as well as to have some exercise. Please do contact Lesley if this appeals to you and you'd like to try.

Rather than bombard you with suggestions for other things to do, if you are looking for ideas try the U3A National website, which has dozens. To connect to it, click on U3A, to the right of the top bar on any of our pages. Or just google U3A.

There is also a really good Facebook group called U3A: Keeping in touch which has nearly 5000 members now. Go to it on Facebook and apply to join. It's free of course but when you apply they will ask you to type in which U3A you belong to. The check will only take 2-3 days. Then you'll be admitted and can take advantage of all the chats, links and other information there. Several of your committee are already members.

If you're used to phoning or emailing Lesley personally it's fine to keep doing that. But now she also has an entry in the CONTACT page above (see the 'Enquiries about Groups' button). Any message input there will go straight to her new generic email account.

NOTE: Barts Health Daily Updates on the COVID situation in our area's hospitals. These were very briefly suspended but are being posted again (21st December). Remember that they relate solely to COVID in our local Barts Group hospitals, not to cases out in the community. Cheeringly they also include the large total of people who leave hospital recovered.

FOR WHEN WE EMERGE FROM CORONAVIRUS
Interest Groups are the life blood of a U3A. WE WILL NEED MORE as our membership increases. Being a Group Leader is not frightening and it isn't hard work either. You don't have to be an expert (very few, if any of us, are.) You only have to be interested in learning more about something and enthusiastic about doing it in the company of a few other people. Groups are often the place where people quietly make lasting new friendships, rather than sitting in the big audience for the monthly talks.

We warmly welcome new ideas and we try to support anyone who is nervous about leading a group but would like to try. If you would like to start a group but you can't offer a home as a meeting place, you might want to consider booking a small room at Winchester Road? The cost is shared between members of the Group but it's very modest; a few groups meet there already. Another possibility is offering a short sequence of meetings to explore a particular topic or try out a new skill. Lesley will be happy to advise. Her direct contact details are in the monthly newsletter (or send a general message on the Contacts page and it will get through to her).