Happy New Year to you all. I wish you the best of health for the next year, and hope all your wishes for the year come true. Being the first day of the New Year, it is a great time to reflect on last year and look at what can be done to improve for the future new year. I thank you for your participation and camaraderie over the previous year.
It is the case, that as we get older and we retire, often we or our friends, move away to other locations from where they once live and many of our friends who were mainly work colleagues, we lose contact with. Then we have the added issue of ill health and death of our close ones. But the whole vision of AAH was to attract members to our various activities. The next big step was to get to know them better through our social interaction programmes.
In my mind, there have been three outstanding developments in AAH over the last 12 months, and they are:
The addition of many more new members.
We have been fortunate in attracting many new members into our tennis and of late into our Pickleball sessions. Tennis is a great way of attracting those people who have played tennis before and who want to play on a regular basis. However, there are many people who have not played tennis before, and Pickleball is the perfect activity for the non tennis players. In the last 3 months, we have achieved well over 30 new members due to the Pickleball Programme and I am still of the belief that the number of Pickleball Sessions will out strip the number of tennis sessions, in the very near future.
The other impressive increase in membership has been in the Dancing group. Over 12 months ago, the group was decimated due to a take over of the group situation. However, AAH persisted as it believed that dancing had so many benefits that we needed to include it in our activity agenda. With the assistance of a fantastic dance instructor (Jody Rollason) the group has grown and grown and now has become a very committed fun loving group.
New Friendships that are occurring
But during the year, there has been a marked change in the members who are attending the activities. When the activities are over, many meet for coffee or a beer which allows members to really get to know each other better. Just in the last couple of weeks, when we were not supposedly playing tennis, we had around 19 players who still wanted to play, and especially at this time of the year, we wanted to celebrate over a beer. The interaction was fantastic.
But both in Pickleball and in dancing, meeting for coffee after the session has become an integral part. But it has even now extended more than this to go out to dance venues at night or now including early morning walks. It is fantastic to see, people who never knew each other a few months ago are now developing friendships with people who they can go on outings with. The friendship base in the general population may be shrinking but with those members who join AAH their friendship base is expanding significantly.
Creation of fun times
As we found at our end of year Christmas Party, we can create our own fun times. I have found these social events so much work and a lot of stress to get the members to attend. There seems to be always a reason why not to attend, but if we want to keep young at heart then we need to get out in the real exciting world and be part of it. This year, many of the members of the Dance Group, got involved to help in the organising and running of the event. They did a fantastic job.
But what they showed us all, that we do not need to spend a lot of time searching for things to do. We can create events for ourselves and I can guarantee that those attending will have a lot of fun. Over tennis drinks last week, it was encouraging to hear from members that they want more social events through out the year. It is only up to us to organise and what a better way to get to know each other. But what we need is your support and instead of saying no to attending, say "let's give it a go". You will be surprised, with the fun you have.
In the coming weeks, I plan to distribute a survey to gather feedback from members on new activities they would like to incorporate into AAH. These suggestions have been inspired by many of our new members, who possess specific skills that could be valuable in creating these activities. Please take the time to complete the survey, as your input will only enhance AAH.
ENJOY YOUR NEW YEAR CELEBRATIONS
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