We wish to keep the time taken to conduct the business of the AGM to a minimum. So rather than have each committee member responsible for various activities standing up and giving a verbal report, we are arranging for them to give a written report here, instead. These reports will be available on the night, but we would hope that most people attending would have read them before coming to the meeting.

Summary of Manchester Concord Social events for the year Jan to Dec 2009

This covers:-
1. Events on Wednesday evenings organised by members of the committee,
2. Events on other days or evenings organised by members of the club,
3. Events run by us during the Sparkle weekend.

Wednesday evening events

These can be split into:-
1. Theme nights, where we entertain ourselves,
2. Visits by others offering us a service,
3. Visits by others to meet our members.

The Theme/Event nights we have arranged were:-

18th Feb Estelle's picture night
11th March Red Dress night
15th April Easter Bonnet competition
20th May Purple Dress night
24th June White Dress evening
12th Aug Saree evening
30th Sept Chinese/Oriental evening
4th Nov Black and/or White evening.
18th Nov Marieanne's musical evening.
16th Dec Our Christmas party.

The least successful of these was the Easter Bonnet competition when only 5 people entered.
The colour theme nights seem to be the most popular as far more people took part. See pictures on Mary's Blog pages.
The Saree and Chinese evenings worked OK but at present not enough people have this type of outfit, so next year we plan to combine these themes into one evening as an Oriental night. We hope that slowly more members will acquire such outfits as they are great fun to wear.
Marieanne's Musical evening was very enjoyable and a nice change for us. We hope such evenings will continue.
Estelle's picture evening was great fun as she had a huge number of very amusing and artistic pictures to show. I hope she is able to do this again.

Visits by others offering us a service

4th March The girls from Transfixed came to show their skills.

3rd June Anne came to show her hand made jewellery and sell some at very reasonable prices.

23rd Sept Anne joined us for a second evening selling jewellery again.

11th Nov Lana and Mei from the Thai gift shop came and set up their stall selling a wide range of items.

25th Nov Tarnia and Jo came along to take portrait photos of quite a few of our members.

Visits by others to meet our members.

1st April The committee members from NTPA joined us for the evening. (National Trans Police Association)

27th May We had a partners evening to try to encourage more partners to come along. Each partner was given a red rose as a thank you

24th July Councillor Paul Murphy who is Chairman of the Manchester Police Authority came along to see for himself what our club is like. He was very complimentary and promised to return at some point bringing more of the councillors with him.

Events on other days or evenings organised by members of the club,

At around 2 monthly intervals Bev has arranged Saturday evening meals out in the village under the heading "Ladies who Dine" on the forum. These are very popular and Bev is to be congratulated on persevering with the ever increasing numbers.

In June, Hazel arranged a very enjoyable visit to the Ladyboys here in Manchester. She is already arranging a similar visit for 2010 but this time intends to include a Thai meal in the Ladyboys tent as well.

In October Hazel arranged a visit to see "Funny Girls" in Blackpool and this was even more popular. It included a visit to a Chinese restaurant before the show to make a full evening of it.
Thank you Hazel for all the effort involved in arranging these events.

On the 5th of December we had our Christmas meal in Villaggios with 42 people attending

On the 9th of Dec a number of people went to see the Rocky Horror show with this outing having been set up by Susie.
Sadly Susie was too ill to attend it and we have not heard from her since then. I can only hope she is getting better.

Events run by us during the Sparkle weekend.

We helped to organise the welcome get together on the Friday afternoon in this bar. We will do it again in 2010 and this time we plan to have some form of moving show advertising ourselves on the screen via our computer.

We had a tent up in the park to advertise this club.

We organised a buffet and musical evening here in the Rembrandt which was very popular.

I think this summary illustrates very well, how many activities we have been involved with this year.
If any of you have any more ideas about different activities that would be popular then please let us know. But, be warned, we may ask you to help organise them.

Mary

Membership Secretary's Report - 2009/10

It is almost two years now since the inception of Manchester Concord in April 2008. Throughout that time I am pleased to announce that our membership has steadily grown literally week-by-week to the point where we have now signed up over 300 members. This is frequently becoming more and more evident by some of the large turnouts we are getting on Wednesday evenings. I think this is very encouraging and bodes well for the future of the group.

I am confident that our membership will continue to grow throughout 2010.

Some of the key points to note are: -

" New Members in last 12 months - 94

" Best month in past 12 months - June (13 new members)

" Total membership signings as at 16/03/10 - 309

" Current paid up membership as at 16/03/10 - 139

I have to point out that so far 139 members are currently paid up until the end of 2010, which still leaves 170 membership renewals still outstanding.

I'm obviously hoping that most of those still outstanding will decide to renew their subscriptions in due course.

I would just like to thank everyone who has joined us. The committee and I look forward to your continued support throughout 2010 and beyond.

Thank You.

Elaine

Membership Secretary
Manchester Concord

The forum, over the last year, and now with 130 members, has remained fairly static at 60-65% of the current MC membership.

As such it has continued to provide an extension to Wednesday nights, particularly for those members from further afield who cannot get to Manchester on a frequent basis or who work away. As well as keeping members in touch with one another it has provided a useful mechanism for arranging various activities outside of the usual Wednesday nights and I would like to thank those members who have arranged trips out over the last year via the forum.

I have always felt that the forum should provide a means for members to get to know other members better and to be able to exchange ideas on the running of MC with the Committee. To that end it is important in future for the Committee to become more involved in the forum and for those members of MC who have not yet done so to also become members of the forum.

At present approximately 10% of MC members do not have email addresses and I would encourage them to do so as soon as possible.
Without this they cannot join the forum and, more importantly, an email address in the only means the Committee have of contacting
members about meetings and other events concerning MC.

In any event I have notified the Committee at our last meeting that this coming year will be the last that I shall serve as a Committee member. I live in Chester and have never been a very regular visitor to the Rembrandt and I now also spend half my time in France, a proportion that is only likely to increase.

More importantly I have, in recent months, taken on a voluntary role with Press For Change and therefore after this years Sparkle I shall concentrate most of my efforts there. Nevertheless I hope that next years Committee will consider ways to enable the forum to grow and prosper in the future.

Astrid Walker