Meet The Trustees for the West Midlands and East Midlands

Jean Jackson, Trustee for the West Midlands

I’ve been Regional Trustee now for about ten weeks and while much of that time has been spent learning more about u3a and how it works, I’ve also managed to speak to a lot of members. I’m looking forward to re-connecting with the Regional support team, and to having more people on that team so that I can get a good view of what u3as in the Region want from me and what we’d benefit from doing collectively. One example of that might be a summer school – I’m attending the North West Region’s event at the University of Carlisle so that I can talk from experience.

So far I’ve attended Much Wenlock’s 10th anniversary celebrations – very inspiring –, am contacting all the regional networks, and am working with Sutton Coldfield u3a to plan our first regional event on Wednesday 19 July, where we’ll be joined by Sam Mauger, CEO of u3a, and John and Margaret Aston from the Black Country are ably composing our first newsletter, due in June.

Laurence, Chair of Worcester u3a, has kindly agreed to be the Council rep for our region, and he’ll attend the first in-person meeting in June. We’ll update members about that at the regional event. Thank you to everyone who submitted questions for debate by the Council.

And Dr Peter Rookes, who’s based in the W Midlands, continues his popular series of national monthly webinars about “Exploring World Faiths.” Details are on the national website: go to - Learn - Subject Advice - Exploring World Faiths - Upcoming Webinar.

In the Regional newsletter you’ll see that I’m reviving Allan Walmsley’s “Fireside chat” Zooms, this time at lunchtimes on a Thursday, and I’ll post the link on the West Midlands website. I’m always happy to hear from members, so please don’t feel you have to wait until then - my email is This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..