THIS NEWSLETTER SHOULD BE DISPLAYED FOR THE USE OF ALL MEMBERS

Transcription

1 Scotland & Northern Ireland Area Newsletter October 2015 THIS NEWSLETTER SHOULD BE DISPLAYED FOR THE USE OF ALL MEMBERS I n s i d e t h i s i s s u e : Battle of Britain 75 Service, St Giles RAF Association Remembrance Garden Air Marshal Peter Walker Ayr and Prestwick Branch Fundraising Skydive Scottish Air Show Aldergrove Battle of Britain Event. RAF Association Christmas Cards Volunteering Update Membership 7 Area Admin Assistant - Maternity Cover Contact Details Area Supporters Scottish Airshow Diary Dates Oct 21 Oct 29 Nov 8 Nov 9 Apr 1-3 Southern Region Meeting & Welfare Seminar, Glasgow Bereavement Awareness Seminar, Glasgow Cenotaph Ceremony, London Festival of Remembrance, Cathcart Old Parish Church Area Conference, Portrush On Saturday the 5th and Sunday the 6th of September the Scottish Airshow returned to South Ayrshire. Around 120, 000 people attended the two day event, which included the free Air Show at the Low Green on the Saturday and a static display at Prestwick Airport on the Sunday. On Saturday there were a number of brilliant displays, including the Red Arrows, a Battle of Britain Memorial flight and the last chance to see the Vulcan Bomber fly in Scotland. RAFA put on a Brew for the Few marquee, which veterans were invited to use throughout the day, as a place to have a seat and rest their legs, enjoy a tea and coffee and Continued on Page 4

2 P a g e 2 Battle of Britain 75 Service, St Giles On Thursday the 24th of September at 11am, a service was held at St Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh to commemorate the 75th Anniversary of the Battle of Britain. The service was attended by many members and friends of the RAF Association, as well as some VIP guests including HRH The Duke of York, our guests of honour. The Sermon was led by The Rev (Wing Commander) Jonathan Wylie, and there were readings by Air Marshal Sir Dusty Miller, and The Very Rev Dr Findlay AJ Macdonald. The Service was followed by a reception in the Lothian Chambers, where guests enjoyed tea, coffee, sandwiches and other refreshments. There were also speeches by the Lord Provost of the City of Edinburgh The Right Hon Donald Wilson, and Air Marshal Sir Dusty Miller. who was met by our National President Air Marshal Sir Dusty Miller, and Air Officer Scotland Air Vice Marshal Ross Paterson; and Secretary of State for Scotland David Mundell. There were also several World War 2 Veterans at the event who were invited as

3 RAF Association Remembrance Garden P a g e 3 'We are currently in the process of enhancing and carrying out essential maintenance work in our RAF Association Remembrance Garden at the National Memorial Arboretum in Alrewas, Staffordshire. We envisage the entire project will take 4 weeks to complete starting from the 21st of September 2015 and therefore will not be accessible during this time. We thank you kindly for your patience and if you require any further information about the our RAF Association Remembrance Garden, please do not hesitate to contact our Legacy and Memoriam Manager Vin- ny Manak on or vinny.manak@rafa.org.uk Air Marshal Peter Walker It is with considerable sadness that the death of His Excellency Air Marshal Peter Walker, Lieutenant Governor of Guernsey and President of the European Area of the Association, is announced. Air Marshal Walker died in the early hours of Sunday 6th September. A letter expressing condolence and sympathy on behalf of all members of the Association has been written by the President to Mrs Linda Walker and her family. Ayr & Prestwick Branch Fundraising Skydive Four youth members of Ayr & Prestwick Branch, Warrant Officer Shannon Alexander, Sergeant Anna Roach, Corporal Kieran Smith (all of 137 Ayr & Prestwick Squadron ATC) and Emma Mclarnon from Brown Brother s of our printers raised almost 3000 from completing a Sky Dive with the RAF Falcons Parachute Display Team. Congratulations and thank you all.

4 P a g e 4 Scottish Airshow Continued from page 1 Hunter our Director of HR & Volunteering was also there recruiting volunteers, and the Leicester Events Team were there with their mobile exhibition trailer, who raised a staggering 14, 000 over the two days. and lots of cakes and biscuits kindly donated by Tunnocks and Pathhead Bakery. As it was a beautifully sunny day we were also able to have an outdoor seating area where veterans could enjoy the displays in comfort. Thank you to our many volunteers from various branches who worked very hard all day to make the Brew for the Few Marquee a great success. The Ayr and Prestwick Branch of the RAF Association used the Scotland and Northern Ireland Area mobile exhibition trailer to raise awareness and essential funds on both days with great success, Alyson Plans for the next Scottish Airshow on the 3rd and 4th of September 2016 are already underway,

5 Aldergrove Battle of Britain Event P a g e 5 On Sunday the 20th August Aldergrove Flying Station hosted the Annual Battle of Britain Parade, this year the Service took place in the Station Gymnasium. A reception was held in the gym for 600 people after the Service where war time music entertainment was provided along with food and refreshments. A Parade prior to the Service the was headed by the band of the Royal Irish, on Parade were members of 502 RAuxAF, veterans from RAFA, TRBL, ROCA and the Malay and Borneo Veterans followed by the ATC. The Salute was very kindly taken by Her Majesty s Lord Lieutenant Mrs Joan Christie. RAF Association Christmas Cards Attached to this months Scotland and Northern I~reland Area Newsletter is an order form for this years Crested Christmas Cards, Diaries and Calendars, As the October- December issue of Air Mail will not be printed this year, you will be able to order your Cards, Calendars and Diaries from this order form in stead. The image to the right shows all of the card designs available for this years Christmas cards.

6 P a g e 6 Volunteering Update After successfully deploying a large number of volunteers, from all over the UK, to collect donations for the Battle of Britain 75th Anniversary events, we d like to thank you all for your help at all the many events that took place. Volunteers came from both the public as well as from serving and ex-serving personnel. In With your help, we have raised awareness of the work the Association does to help the RAF family as well as raised significant funds to support this work. Thank you to all of you that volunteered in whichever role you did, many of which went on behind the scenes. We will soon have our new webpages, on volunteering, ready on our website where volunteers will be able to sign up for events near them, as well as find out information on the different volunteering roles available. We will continue to support requests from Branches for volunteers to join their teams and hope to have even more success once the new system is underway. As part of the new volunteering information pages and registration system, volunteers will be able to access the Volunteer Handbook. This is currently being finalised and we will be consulting with representatives from Areas shortly on this for any final feedback. In the coming months, we will be writing to all our Branches to find out who we have volunteering in which roles, as well as asking how long they have been supporting us. order to best recognise all our volunteers, we would like to find out who and where everyone is, as we know that a lot of great volunteering is taking place in our Branches every day. As part of our desire to recognise our volunteers, we will be aiming to send out long service volunteering pin badges to our volunteers in Please support us in this audit, as this will help us to properly identify and recognise all our volunteers.

7 P a g e 7 What can you do to help the Association grow? Good news. The number of new members recruited this year across the whole Association has now reached more than 3,800 surpassing the final numbers for 2014 and still 3 months to go! Membership is showing growth in all age categories up to 75 years and we now have as many as 44% of today s serving RAF. It is also interesting to see that more than half our entire membership is aged under 65. Thank you for your recruiting efforts and for your determination as we continue to secure the future with younger individuals. A message for those Branches that operate Clubs (whether they be Clubs that still operate under the Association s Standard Club Rules or independent trading under lease agreement). Is there anything more you can do to encourage all your local club goers to become fully paid up members of the Association? Get them signed up now and we can offer 15 months for the price of 12. Remember per year for ordinary members and 8.50 for full associates. We know that several of our Clubs have already taken this initiative. Please don t let up we are aiming to finish the year with our best recruiting numbers ever! We have found that just by asking people directly to join the Association we are getting great results! If all of us were out there getting just one Member, we would double in size, it is as simple as that. So please take a look at your Christmas card list this year (sending RAFA Christmas cards of course) and ask ex and serving RAF friends and family to join. In your contacts you can send your friends a link to join online just paste it in from the members/become-amember page. And if you use Facebook please ask your RAF and other friends to join AND also get them to ask THEIR friends. Make it easy for them by including the link to the joining page on the website. Across the Scotland & Northern Ireland Area, 232 individuals who had memberships in 2014 have not yet renewed for this year. We ask you to remember that there are many reasons why members may not renew they could be unwell or be struggling with money or another issue so it s worthwhile for Branches to check in to see why members haven t renewed and to ascertain whether there s anything we can do to help them. This is really all about offering support to members of the RAF Family. Branch Membership Secretaries will be sent membership listings at the end of each month to help with this and can request an up-to-date list from Sophie at any time. Area Administrative Assistant - Maternity Cover We are currently recruiting for an Area Administrative Assistant at the Scotland area office in Edinburgh. This would be a temporary, full time role, as maternity cover for 6 months. If you or anybody you know might be interested, there are full details attached to this months newsletter!

8 HELP US TO STAY IN TOUCH WITH YOU By far, the quickest and easiest way for us to get in contact with our members is through . This method of communication also saves money on postage money that we can instead spend on providing welfare support to members of the RAF Family. Please update us on your current address by sending a quick note to Sophie using the details on the right. AREA STAFF CONTACT DETAILS Edinburgh Office Sophie Bruce, Area Admin Assistant sophie.bruce@rafa.org.uk Shiela Laramore, Assistant Area Welfare Officer shiela.laramore@rafa.org.uk WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU Let Sophie know what your Branch is up to, so that it can be included in next month s newsletter. You can contact Sophie by calling the office, or you can your updates and photographs to her using the details to the right Follow us on: Mike McCourt, Area Welfare Officer: mike.mccourt@rafa.org.uk Leuchars Office Dave Mowatt, Branch Support Officer: dave.mowatt@rafa.org.uk Joe Stanfield, Area Director: joe.stanfield@rafa.org.uk Belfast Office Carol Titterington, NI Regional Support Officer carol.titterington@rafa.org.uk Sarah Waugh, NI Regional Manager sarah.waugh@rafa.org.uk Area Supporters We would like to express our thanks to Pathhead Bakery and Tunnock s for their generous donations towards our Brew for the Few marquee at the Scottish Airshow. Would you like the opportunity to thank your Branch s supporters? If so, get in touch with Sophie at the office, and we can do just that in the next Area Newsletter.