CHAIR’S REPORT 2011/2012
Our year started with the Women in Cricket Breakfast on the December 27, 2011, which saw Australia play India. Angela Pippos was again our MC and her questioning of our guest speaker for the morning, Wasim Akram, kept us all very entertained. Angela also interviewed Meg Lanning and Emma Inglis from the Vic Spirit, former Australian player, Mel Jones and Marcella Torre from the MCC Women’s cricket, giving the room a wonderful insight to women’s cricket.
We have an auction every year and this year we had the very generous donation of two Argyle white diamonds from James Harvey, a very loyal and devoted supporter of the WOMCC. A signed bat and photograph from Wasim Akram, a Vic Spirit signed bat and photograph with Meg and Emma and a glass of champagne. The auction proceeds totalled $3600.
We choose a different charity to support every year and pledge a donation of $4000. This year we raised money for Dare to Dream, a partnership initiative of the YWCA (Victoria) and Westside Circus and is also supported by the Melbourne Football Club.
January saw us update our website. We now have generic explanations of each of our three annual functions and a photographic record of all our events.
Women in Wine on the February 22 featured Eliza Brown from All Saints Estate and St Leonards Vineyard. Eliza proved to be a very engaging and entertaining speaker as was evident by the many questions asked from the audience. Again this year the menu was expertly matched to the wines by MCC Epicure executive chef, Peter Haycroft.
This event allows us to reward our members and guests that attend with showbags full of donated items from our various sponsors. Some items included this year were hairspray from Cedel, Craisins from Ocean Spray and Clearwipes from JA Davey.
We also have a raffle which is generously supported by sponsors that this year included the Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Centre, Profiler Recruitment, Campaspe House and Blue Illusion. Our raffle raised $1080, part of which went to completing our pledge to Dare to Dream.
Our second charity of choice for 2012 was FIDA. The Football Integration Development Association which provides regular competitive Australian rules football for players with an intellectual disability.
Women in Football on the July 14 this year was a sell out function with the need for a waiting list as we were clever enough to get the Collingwood Vs Geelong game. Our speaker was Debbie Lee from the Melbourne Football Club who had everyone enthralled with her tales of being a female footballer. Our sub-committee did a wonderful job of decorating the Committee Room for Bastille Day and our chef again created a wonderful meal for the event.
We had signed football jumpers donated from Collingwood, Geelong and Melbourne and were lucky enough to have Tony Nathan available to auction them for us. The auction proceeds totalled $2060. Our raffle items included an accommodation package from Mantra and Morris Jones, Roule Galette and the Melbourne Wine Room all donated food and drink vouchers. This raffle raised $1420.
This year our committee welcomed two new members; Jo Casanelia, and Juhi McInerney and welcomed back Megan Ponsford.
We had seven committee meetings this year and finished with our AGM on November 19 at Morris Jones in Windsor. The present members of the committee were re-elected so we head into our next year with the following committee members:
Jane Nathan, Toni Burbank, Nicole Hall, Liz Chaplin, Elizabeth Syle, Jo Casanelia, Juhi McInerney, Julie Davis, Margot Foster, Mary Anne Hartley, Megan Ponsford, Melanie Monk and Tracey Wardill.
We finished with our Christmas dinner celebration at Morris Jones and look forward to organising and presenting more wonderful events in our 2012/2013 year.
Kerri Spillane
November 21, 2012