September 2023
Oliva U3A News
Issue 2401
Good morning,
September brings the start to our U3A year after what seemed a very long and hot summer and now a very wet start to autumn. I hope you are all looking forward to the months to come, and I really enjoyed meeting so many members at the hastily rearranged coffee morning at Tasca Olivense. Over 100 members attended and signed up again for the coming year. The sign and pay system seem to work very well, but I always appreciate feedback if you know different.
2023-24 sees new groups for you to sign up to and we are also creating an Events Team to organise regular social events on top of the regular coffee mornings and general assemblies when a speaker will be invited to share their interests, hobbies or knowledge.
If you wish to be part of the events team, please contact me at president@u3aoliva.org; any events are considered and a varied input is welcome.
At this point I would like to introduce your committee. As you are probably aware there have been a few changes to the committee, which was voted on and elected at the AGM in May 2023; when I wasn’t even a twinkle in the eye. To help you keep abreast of the situation here is a rundown of the current Committee Members and roles being undertaken.
President: Angela Town
Vice president: Stephen Hems
Secretary: Belinda Allan
Treasurer: Graham Martin
Webmaster/ Membership Secretary, and Group Coordinator: Kelvin Jarman
Travel Team: Hilary Clark
Travel team: Gary Slater
Press and Publicity: Sandra Dunderdale
Deputy Webmaster: Barry Purvis
The Almoner: Denise Hart
Committee member: Julie Hayward
We also have some non-committee members helping in the background, who also deserve a mention.
Group Liaison: Jassy Purves
Publicity Assistant: Jessica Sawade
Travel Team: Michael Ponting
Travel Team: Joanne Perez
Travel Team: Helen Scolari
Travel Team: James Scolari
Website development: Richard McCarthy
And last but not least the Meet and Greet team of Wilma Taggart and Sue Arnott
Malcolm Slater who was the Group Coordinator, and briefly the Secretary, has stepped down from the Committee and we wish to thank him for his enthusiasm and the work he put in, especially as Group Coordinator.
The changes on the committee mean that there are quite a few active committee members who have not been officially elected (that includes me) and subsequently this does not allow us to carry out our duties fully and officially. To this end I am proposing an EGM (emergency/extraordinary general meeting) in the near future where this issue can be address. Hopefully it can be combined with a general assembly or coffee morning, but more information on that in a few weeks.
Angela
Research Project
I have been asked to invite our members to take part in a collaborative research project with HolaS. who are working with the aim of offering options for active aging and reducing the impact of unwanted loneliness that affects people so much.
Until now, they had focused on evaluating all the options that benefit the Spanish population, but realised, after a few questions, that the foreign community requires services and entertainment offerings adapted to their needs. Especially as provinces such as Malaga, or Alicante, where a percentage greater than 15% of the population is of foreign nationality, they have decided to address this analysis, and therefore having our feedback is essential to understand and therefore be able to develop, in the future , alternatives that may be of interest to us.
I have checked the source of the research and it is all kosha. They have the institutional support of the Malaga Provincial Council, because holaS Comunidad (hola-S) is one of the projects that was selected last April to be part of the social entrepreneurship incubator of the “La Noria” Social Innovation centre, belonging to the Malaga Provincial Council. I know we are not near Malaga, but coming close to Alicante it will help and the information could eventually be used nationally.
If you would like to take part in the research please click on this link
https://forms.gle/fE1VfL5oenVtzAoX7
New Groups
We have a few new groups starting, one of which is the Help Support Network Group. For this group, I (Angela Town) will be group leader and Denise Hart, the almoner, will be the deputy. We are very excited to be getting this group going, which is all about helping and supporting each other, by hopefully offering an hour of your time a month to help where and when needed. This hour can be for shopping, chatting, feeding a cat, collecting medicines, gardening, visiting in hospital.…do you get the picture?
We are also creating an extensive list of resources that members are willing to loan other members (anything and everything).
Regular meetings will be planned to help members with those tricky phone apps or complex forms that we apparently need to book appointments, find out how to pay bills, or to get discount holidays. The meetings will also help you all to get to know each other and network.
Head over to the webpage here and sign up for emails or keep an eye on the group page as to when the meetings will happen, If you have any items that you can loan out, no matter how insignificant you think it is, I am sure someone will be happy to borrow it, so please do get in touch.
Look out for these new groups!
Have you ever dreamt of playing a Flamenco guitar?
Now, when you finally have all the time in the world, do you want to take the chance and learn the secrets of Flamenco music? This year you could do it together with Tony Valverde, a professional flamenco guitarist and singer who is ready to start flamenco guitar classes for you for a small fee of eight euros but a much more rewarding environment.
Tony has been playing and singing for many years, he composes music and lyrics, and every Thursday he will guide you through the basic techniques and flamenco rhythms. If needed, he can also help you find a Spanish acoustics guitar at affordable prices! Do not worry about the level of your Castellano, Tony will be accompanied by a Spanish to English interpreter to help explain ideas in English.
You can always contact Trees Fenijn, the group leader, for more information (flamencoguitar@u3aoliva.org), but, subject to the approval by the municipal authorities of the premises at Pensionistas, the class is foreseen to take place on Thursdays at 10:00- 11:00, so book your place with us and start enjoying an exciting revelation of passionate rhythms and sounds!
Interested in making music? Check out our Sing & Play or our Guitar groups!
Starting a new class on Belly Dancing
This proposed new group is already getting a lot of intrest!
If you you fancy shakin’ your booty, contact bellydancing@u3aoliva.org!
Subject to the approval by the municipal authorities of the premises at Pensionistas, so book your place with us soon.
Fancy the idea of getting moving? How about our Flamenco dancing class? Bit more sedentary? Try Yoga!
Travel up-date!
After many successful trips, the U3A travel section fell into abeyance during the pandemic and it took until last December 2022 for us to make a new start. We had a great day out to Valencia including a guided coach tour around the city perimeter and then several hours free time for lunch and pre-Christmas shopping.
Early March saw us enjoying a selection of wine and tapas tasters after a guided tour of the Enrique Mendoza Winery at Romeral, near Albir.
Afterwards we reboarded the coach which took us right down to the promenade at Albir and folk took advantage of a couple of hours free time to stroll along the beach, partake of coffee, cake and ice cream and generally relax in the beautiful spring sunshine.
On the 13th September, a 25 seater coach was fully booked up for a super trip to Albufera. This would have included a boat trip on the lake, a Valencian paella lunch plus a guided tour of a traditional house for rice workers. We chose this week for the trip because of the certainty of good weather but how wrong we were! Very disappointing, though, the travel agency had to advise us to cancel because of the high risk of thunderstorm at the very time we would have been on the lake. Everybody has been very understanding and hopefully we will be arranging this trip again, probably around Easter time.
To date we have been hit and miss with numbers for our trips so from now on we want to let members express interest before we go ahead with any concrete planning. To this end we would like anyone interested in a late evening trip to Benidorm Palace to let us know soon. We have reserved this trip for 28th November but will not go ahead unless we can get a minimum of 20 sign ups and if possible 30.
The trip would cost €80 for 20 guests, dropping to €72 for 30 or more. Don’t forget, this includes the coach, tickets for the show (‘Fire’) and the Gran Palace 3 course dinner menu.
If you are interested, please let us know here, or by email: travel@u3aoliva.org
Your travel team meets regularly and has many more ideas in the pipeline so keep a watch out for our latest offerings!