THE president Sue Horsfall opened the meeting by welcoming everybody and made the usual monthly announcements.

She reported the recent fundraising skittles match raised £52 for the Young Carer’s charity.

A coffee morning will also be held for the charity in the Methodist Church Hall on June 10 from 10.30 to12.30 and Sue asked for members to help or donate cakes or produce to sell. Everybody who attended the recent WI talk enjoyed hearing the history of the WI over the years.

Sue put forward two WI resolutions for voting. Krista gave an informative talk on plastic soup and the need to eliminate plastics getting into the oceans and the food chain.

Adele was equally informative about the need to alleviate loneliness in the community.

Both resolutions were selected and will go forward to the final vote at the Liverpool AGM in June.

Sue introduced Helen Harrison. Helen gave us an in depth account of her work with the CRED Foundation in Uganda.

She gave an interesting presentation called ‘Fairtrade Gold and Paper Beads’ showing slides where small-scale artisanal gold mining takes place and how these miners were trained to use technology to eliminate the use of mercury from the gold mining process.

She also told us about the Acholi people who fled from conflict in the north of the country and now produces beautiful jewellery and decorative bowls from paper.

Most of these people couldn’t afford to attend school as children but they now fund their children’s school fees and provide daily food for their families.

Helen has worked for the foundation since 2009 and in that time has visited all the CRED partners several times, including team trips to most of them.

If you would like to join our friendly group come along to one of our meetings, anyone can come to three taster meetings for £3 per meeting.

We meet on the third Tuesday of every month at the Methodist Church Hall and our next meeting is on Tuesday, June 20 at 7.30pm.

The speaker will be Sally Taylor; Award winning Flower Arranger.