To members and friends of Folkestone Duplicate Bridge Club
At our AGM to be held at 1.00 pm on Monday 17 February, I will be stepping down as Chairman of the club after 10 exciting and interesting years in the role.
I wanted to take this opportunity to thank all of you - members of the club and many outside the club - whose help, support and encouragement I have valued so much throughout my time as Chairman.
I have had the support of very strong committees throughout the 10 years and I am delighted that Jan Stanyon, our excellent Vice Chairman, has agreed to take over the role of Chairman, subject to confirmation at the AGM. With her experience of chairmanship and her enormous levels of energy, dedication and common sense, she is very well equipped to take our club forward into the future.
The last 10 years have brought forth some interesting challenges, especially the covid pandemic and, prior to that, in 2015 and with very little notice, the need to find and settle into a new venue. The latter has been an unqualified success, thanks in no small part to the excellent relationship that we have developed with Folkestone Baptist Church. As regards our post-covid recovery, our decisions to return to face to face bridge as soon as it was allowed and to move to playing on Monday afternoons instead of the evenings, have paid off handsomely.
With over 125 members, with our very large face to face table numbers ( including the really important Gentle Duplicate tables ) and with a Thursday evening online session each week for our members, we are an extremely busy and successful club with healthy finances, with a bright future and with a very long-standing commitment to teaching. It is always worth remembering that recruiting new members is made more of a challenge for a coastal club like ours, simply because one half of our natural " circle of recruitment " is the sea and, so far, there is no evidence of fish and dolphins having any natural talent for or interest in bridge. That is why our teaching classes and a warm and welcoming atmosphere for new members and visitors have been and will continue to be vital for the club.
In conclusion, I am so proud that over the 10 years we have raised in excess of £6500 for charity, including Children in Need and also the Rainbow Centre, a local charity that does great things to help those in need in our community. My objective as Chairman has always been that our club should not just be a bridge club. Rather, and much more ambitiously, I have wanted us to be a community of friends who play bridge together, who enjoy one another's company and who play a part in our local community. Thank you all for joining in the endeavour to strive for that objective.
With best wishes
David Ellerby
FDBC Chairman
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