7 attendees: OC = Owen Clutton (Chairman), PL = Peter Lowe, MM = Mary O’Mahony, DB = Diana Betts, Teresa Wells (TW), June Adams (JA), Geraldine Thompson (GT)
Apologies were received from: Roger Wright
Agreed actions shown in bold red type.
1. Traidcraft stall
GT noted that the last stall took £250 in takings and there were £61 in donations. We are running a reasonable credit. She had spoken to Geoff Ford who recommends we wait until December before donating the profit to CAFOD. The next stall would be on 13-14th July and volunteers were JA at 6.00pm, OC & PL at 9.15am, TW & GT at 11.00am.
Post-meeting amendment: actual rota was JA, MM, DB at 6.00pm; OC, PL, GT at 9.15am; TW, AM, GT at 11.00am.
2. Bromley Borough Foodbank
The next collection at St James’ would be the weekend of 20-21 July. The only thing to organise is the transport to the Foodbank on Monday 22nd.
TW noted that the Foodbank had asked for volunteers on 5-6th July to hand out leaflets at various local branches of Tesco and this should be advertised at church.
It was agreed to ask for a note to be put in Briefly asking for general volunteers for this.
3. LiveSimply update
The next session of work clearing the LiveSimply Garden site would be on 6th July. There will also be general tidying up and hedge cutting done in the parish garden at the same time.
MM reported there had been no further updates from Bangladesh as such. There are some developments on the CAFOD website but nothing major. We will have to think of what our next Connect2 project will be and this should be discussed at the next meeting.
GT said there was an e-mail today about a CAFOD initiative. We will ask Roger to put it on the agenda for the next meeting. Hopefully he can bring the card. {can anyone shed light on this point which I don’t understand?}
Post-meeting note from Roger
Just before I went on holiday there was an email from CAFOD Southwark to say there had been a communication from Kainmari. All I had time to do was send a brief message to Mrs Bosher so she could tell the children. The Caritas partner in Bangladesh had written this:
Cordial greetings from Caritas Bangladesh!
This is for your kind information that we have handed over the cards to the five Community Narrators of Kainmari under Mongla upazula. The response from the community narrators are as follows:
Sabita said that “We are happy to receive greetings from the people of England. We thank them for remembering us”.
Pabitra Said that , “I have showed the Card to my wife ( Mollika). She told me the card is beautiful with a full of love from the community people”. We also pray for them so the Almighty God blesses them for the whole year”.
Bijoli Said that “Tell them we are happy to receive their greetings”.
Tapoti Said that “My response is I am happy that the community people send their best regards”.
Momata said, I am grateful to the community people for remembering me and the people of Kainmari”.
In addition to this, we are in a process to write letters by the two daughters of Mrs. Bijoli to the twenty six students of St. James Roman Catholic Primary School with some pictures of students from Kainmari.
With best regards,
The “card” he refers to must have been our leaflet about St James’ and Petts Wood. I don’t expect the promised letters will reach us before the end of school term but who knows. I am very pleased we have at last had a response anyway so the children here don’t feel they had been forgotten.
5. Any other business
OC asked about thinking of new ideas for the agenda from September. One thing which has been mentioned is more youth involvement. Some young people have been involved in the garden {not ‘young’ in the sense we mean here though!}.
DB suggested that J&P members might like to donate for a Mass intention for Father Arbo’s brother Ambrose? OC agreed this was a good idea and promised to organise and ask for donations later.
There being no other business, the meeting closed.
The next meeting will be held on Wednesday 24th July at 7.45pm. MM gave her advanced apology for absence.