Page 31 - BPW UK ANNUAL REVIEW 2021-2022 - PART I and II

Our year started with our Regional AGM on Saturday 6 February via Zoom. We were de-
lighted that National President Helen Ashworth and Ros Horsley were able to join us.

We had an excellent turnout for the AGM with nine out of eleven members present.
The regional team reported back on activities during the year. We continue to have represen-
tation on Women’s Forum NI and NIWEP (Northern Ireland Women’s European Platform) and
our Travelling Scholarship and Martha McMenamin Memorial Scholarship. Some groups met
regularly via Zoom, others only restarted meetings later in the year. We enjoyed hearing
from Helen what was happening nationally.

Under normal circumstances we would have had our usual Public Speaking Final that
afternoon but as we were unable to run our November 2020 heats due to Covid it wasn’t pos-
sible. Public Speaking events in other UK regions were also unable to take place which unfor-
tunately meant that the BPW UK Inter-Regional Championship didn’t happen in March 2021.

Events for the rest of the year were seriously impacted by the ongoing restrictions due
to the pandemic.

Our International Lunch due to take place in June had to be postponed. We had hoped
it might have been possible to hold it later in the year but regrettably Covid cases and re-
strictions made it impossible. Hopefully, we will be able to hold it during 2022.

Our Regional Team met in late August to consider the viability of running our Northern
Ireland Public Speaking heats and final in 2021. After some discussion it was agreed to find
out if schools would be interested in participating. A letter was sent to schools in early Sep-
tember advising that we would run the competition but would have to make some changes to
ensure social distancing etc. To keep schools in their own bubble we proposed not to move
the speaker to another team. We also asked schools to enter one team only. We also checked
our usual venues to ensure there was sufficient space to comply with social distancing and
check what other requirements they needed to comply with their Covid health and safety
needs.

Some schools were not able to participate because of their own Covid rules whilst other
schools had brought their January exam season forward to November. We did manage to run
one heat (we usually have three/four), which included our Northern Ireland Regional Final in
Portadown on 23 November. The winners were St Catherine’s College, Armagh and the run-
ners up were The Wallace High School, Lisburn. We had a very interesting evening.
Hopefully we will be able to run more heats and our final in the coming twelve months.

Our Travelling Scholarship was cancelled this year again due to the pandemic.

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