Following a request from Quentin McLaren, we convened a small group of club members to start drawing up a Kelso Bridge Club Development Plan (KBC Dev Plan).  The aim of this plan was to think about the future well-being of the club and its members; for example, thinking about how to expand membership and increase participation/engagement in bridge, following the Covid-19 pandemic.

This group has now met a number of times, considered loads of very wide-ranging ideas and quickly realised that

1. this is a big undertaking
2. we need to divide the work of drawing up the Dev Plan into small groups, each group considering a specific topic (e.g attracting new members)
3. the whole membership should have opportunities to participate and to contribute ideas, opinions, perspectives and expertise

We have now written an initial document (KBC Dev Plan - announcement.doc) which starts with a Mission Statement for the club.  The KBC Dev Plan must obviously align with this.  We then imagine 5 'strands' each of which will hope to have a small group of members to consider ideas, draw up priorities and then a list of proposals, actions or targets.  These strands are

1. Club Environment - how to improve the experience and enjoyment of members - convenors, Shirley Redgrave, Helen Todd
2. Club Growth - exploring opportunities to increase membership and engagement - convenors, Sheena McPherson, Brian Young
3. Schools Initiative - bringing bridge, mini-bridge and cards into local schools - convenors, Gill Robinson, Helen Ross
4. Learning continuum - continued learning, competing, improving our bridge - contact Anne Coles
5. Networking and liaison - building, maintaining and exploiting our links with SBU and other clubs - contact, Jean McLaren

We ask you to consider joining one of these groups, please.  Please talk to the person identified who will be happy to discuss how the process works and how you may be able to contribute.  Alternatively, speak to any member of the Development Group (Paul Hunt, Sheena McPherson, Shirley Redgrave, Gill Robinson, Helen Ross, Brian Young)

For more details about how the whole process will work, you can access the Development Group's proposal to the committee here KBC Dev Group - proposal to committee.doc.