Change of name and the beginning of Cowes WI.

As you will see I have decided to change the name of my blog to Zo Blogs - a play on words you see! All credit to the husband.
Anyway back to business. I have many new exciting things to tell you all but for now I am going to reflect on setting up Cowes WI and I promise I won't keep you in suspense too much longer.
After the email to IOW WI House I had a telephone conversation from Joan Finch, who became our trusted advisor. The conversation went a little like this:
J "where do you live?"
Z "Cowes - but there isn't one in Cowes is there?"
J "no, How old are you?"
Z "31"
J "how would you like to set up a brand new WI for Cowes?"
Z "erm yes okay"
J "Great get at least 5 people interested and call me back and we can take it from there".
So off I went to recruit. Please bear in mind I also work full time and have a cake business as a sideline but hey I found the time. I decided to set up a Cowes WI facebook group as a way to get people interested and a tool to keep high levels of contact. I got support from some amazing people who were as passionate about the idea of a Cowes WI as I was. I spoke to as many women as I could and when I got to around 21 interested ladies I decided to call Joan back. This was after about a week and I think Joan was impressed. The next stage was to find a venue (Northwood House Community Hall after seeing oh about 10 venues!) and a date to hold the initial meeting. Before all this she suggested I get together some ladies that might make up the committee to get together to discuss what a WI is all about and how we can make sure we have a successful new WI. This went well and so did the initial meeting with over 60 ladies from Cowes and further afield turning up who pretty much unanimously voted to have a brand new WI which would be called COWES WI. The president (me) Secretary (sue) and Treasurer (Jo) were all voted for as was the other committee members (Rose, Pauline, Bev, Suzie, Jennie, Becky, Jane) with the very first official meeting being in May 2010. The newly formed committee had  a busy time ahead not only getting to know each other but also plan the activities for the year.