15th October 2023 - Indoor Meeting, Botesdale

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October saw us back at our indoor meeting venue at Parkview Chapel, Botesdale where we had invited along Sheila Jeffery from Marie Curie to give us a talk.

At the MMOC National Rally this year we had sold some of our charity squares to raise money for the MMOC’s chosen charity Marie Curie. To see where we had to send our donation, we contacted Helen Chapman who is the Community Fundraiser for Norfolk and Suffolk for Marie Curie. Helen told us that we could have someone come along to speak to us about the charity if we wanted. So, we took her up on that offer.

Sheila Jeffery is the Chairperson of the Bury St Edmund’s and Newmarket fundraising group, so we invited her along. As Sheila had a bit of a problem finding us we despatched Mary and Jimmy to find her and we held our meeting first where we spoke about events for 2024. We also held our raffle and had refreshments with Sheila and her friend Maureen eventually arriving at 3pm.

Sheila then gave us a talk on her involvement with Marie Curie. She had become a nurse in 1970 at Newmarket Hospital and had a spell working in the x-ray department. She then became a Marie Curie nurse for 20 years and now does a lot of fundraising for the charity. Sheila also told us about Marie Curie herself and how the charity has changed it’s name to Marie Curie from Marie Curie Cancer Care in the last few years as there is more and more people needing care with terminal illnesses other than cancer.

Sheila recently won an award for raising an amazing £120,000 since 2012 for the local group. In Suffolk there are 30 Marie Curie nurses and in 2022 there were 12,000 people cared for. Sheila answered a few questions afterwards. We were able to buy some of the Marie Curie merchandise too. We gave Sheila a donation for £50. We thank all those members that supported the talk and we raised a further £59 for our charity of the year, Upbeat, from the raffle and refreshments.

Also at this meeting our Secretary Tricia told us that she had been given a certificate and badge for being a member of the MMOC for 40 years. This also meant that she had been a member of the Branch for 40 years. (That’s nearly 2/3rds of my life!)