Wexford ladies make friends at innovative new social sessions

In a bid to get ICA ladies to extend themselves in friendship and to get to know members of neighbouring guilds, Wexford Federation has been holding convenor meetings since last September.

In former years, these meetings used to be called ‘group’ meetings but they fell out of custom — now national ICA president Marie O’Toole is promoting them and Deirdre Connery, Wexford Federation president, took the ball on the hop and brought the initiative to the South East.

“In large federations like Dublin, Cork or Wexford — the three biggest federations in the country — it’s hard for members to get to meet and socialise with all the guilds in the federation. In Wexford, we have 32 guilds and almost 600 members,” explains Deirdre.

With information officers taking on the extra role of convenors, there are five convenor areas in Wexford Federation. Each convenor — in the case of Wexford: Gretta O’Connor, Mary Fitzgerald, Dee Devereux, Breda Banville and Joan Furlong — is responsible for an average of six neighbouring guilds, located in a geographical cluster.

“The guilds in a convenor area take it in turns to host a social night where the guilds in the group come together and have home-grown entertainment and fun. The evening is relaxed, homely and conducted as the host guild wishes. But I do ask that members have a chat with at least one other member they didn’t know before,” says Deirdre.

So far, four Wexford guilds have hosted convenor meetings. “Each night was different,” says Deirdre. “Carrig-on-Bannon had a lady talking about natural health, each member was asked to sing a song or say a poem and it went down very well. Horeswood had a lady in talking about Palestine. They asked me to sing a song. I don’t sing but I did that night! Our Lady’s Island had one of their members asking funny questions to which the response had to be ‘yea’ or ‘nay’ like in the British parliament. Kiltealy held theirs close to Christmas and they had someone in demonstrating how to knit snowmen and Santa Claus.”

Deirdre spearheaded the initiative in Wexford because she felt people weren’t getting to know their neighbouring guilds. “Our guild is only four or five miles from Horeswood. I’d know the guild president, secretary and treasurer but I wouldn’t know other members.”