Annual General Meeting 2022

Friends of the Rosie Chairman’s Report 2020 –2021

As I write this, we are still unable to hold a “Friends of the Rosie” AGM in the Hospital because of restrictions caused by the Pandemic not allowing more than one person to be allowed into the hospital at a time.

I need to re-assure everyone that we are still acting as a legal charitable entity, by doing this and by submitting our scrutinised Annual Accounts to the Charity Commission each year.

During last year, Chris Cooper took over as Treasurer from David Sanders, who had been Treasurer for the last 40 years. Chris has already helped us into the 21st century, by moving accounts on-line and obtaining electronic signatures. I would like to thank him for his persistence in working with Barclay’s, which has not been easy.

After more than 30 years of running a Teabar in Clinic 21, which provides Outpatients Women’s Services, we have regretfully decided that we do not have enough of our now mainly elderly volunteers willing to return, so that we could open it up and run it again when conditions allow access. We should give an enormous  thank you to Sally Munday, who has been quietly and single-handedly keeping the Teabar stocked with provisions since 1988. All foodstuffs were given to a Cambridge Foodbank at the start of the Pandemic, so nothing went to waste. We also need to thank all those volunteers who turned up for sessions over the years to keep it open, particularly Elizabeth Bowden who was the mainstay for many years and Ann Laskey, who kept in touch with the volunteers and produced regular rotas.

As you will have realised, we have not been able to hold in-person stalls selling our goods, but our knitters and crafters have carried on under Avril Williams’ guidance, producing lots of beautiful  goods, which Avril has been able to sell on-line, raising us much-needed funds, while other methods were impossible. Thank you, Avril.

Mary Cooper has been helping me for many years as Secretary and recently initiating Chris into the foibles of our Charity, so thank you Mary. At least you haven’t been quite as busy with meeting Minutes as usual.

Mary Sanders, Chair

The Tea Bar

We would like to thank everybody who has helped us by buying from or serving at the tea-bar in Clinic 21 of the Rosie since 1985 raising money for the Rosie (and previously the Mill Road) maternity hospital so we could provide facilities and equipment not funded by the NHS.

In the year before lockdown we were only able to partially fill the tea-bar rota due to a shortage of volunteers. We had recently checked how many volunteers would be able to continue to help with the tea-bar after the pandemic and only 2 felt they could continue helping. Other volunteers had health problems and other commitments.

We hope that the Rosie will be able to find a good new use for the tea bar and wish Clinic 21 well.

Once again thank you to all who have supported us.

Ann Laskey

Rosie in Stitches

Rosie in Stitches has raised £1,358.79 after expenses for online fees, our domain name, insurance and postage and packaging costs.

We had 81 new customers and 8 repeat customers during 2021

Special thanks this year for the commissions that were completed by Susan Smith, Avril, Pat, Julia and Susan Howlett. Avril’s favourite commission was a cardigan with fluffy white sheep running around.

We only had one in person stall as part of the Bar Hill Christmas light switch on event in November making £34. It was well attended and we kept everyone Covid safe. The items on the stall were taken straight to a friends garage for quarantine purposes.

Susan Howlett and Avril Williams have removed from the Clinic 21 store cupboard all the old knitwear. This is now listed for sale on the website, eBay and Facebook. www.rosieinstitches.org.uk, https://www.ebay.co.uk/usr/rosieinstitches2010 and https://www.facebook.com/RosieinStitches/

The clinic 21 store cupboard has several large bags of donations ready for when the wards are accepting knitwear again.

We did donate several sacks of blankets, traffic light hats, canular mittens and bonding squares in the summer when The Rosie were briefly accepting knitwear.

Susan Howlett and Avril Williams entered Rosie in Stitches into several online marketplace events during the year. Some were one or two days, one was for 3 months and two have been year long markets.Susan volunteered to be interviewed for one of the events.

We have continued to benefit from customer’s accepting the invitation to round up at the checkout on their online purchases. In 2021 we received £766.24. Avril and Susan have done very well selling to friends and family making a further £207.38 during the year. One of Avril’s friends held pop up shops with some of the Rosie items and raised during the year £184.50. Sales on our website and facebook have picked up and made £264.54 with lots of returning customers.eBay has continued to do very well with the general move to online shopping and finding hobbies to do at home while self isolating. The total this year is £613.49. We still have nearly new hardback craft books for sale on Amazon and sold £44.38 during the year.

We are continuing to accept donations of unwanted crafting materials for our crafters to use or for us to sell on eBay.

We are still recruiting new crafters to our team, with some lovely toys and cushions received recently.