Thursday 24 March 2011

Roll out the red carpet!

I know this isn't craft releated but I wanted to share with you! I work for an organisation called Equals, running friendship groups for women from minority ethnic backgrounds. On the Isle of Wight there is only a small population of BME families and surveys showed that many of the women felt isolated due to rural living and language and cultural barriers, so the groups were set up to aid social inclusion, provide friendship and support, training, work skills and fun activities. A little while ago I entered us into the South East Community Empowerment Awards and we won 3rd place! Last night we attended an awards evening in Winchester to collect our trophy.
We were scored highly on: Good engagement of BME women, achieving empowerment and influence and supporting cohesion, community and local goverment working together and having a real impact on the community.
It was a nightmare getting there as all trains were delayed or cancelled due to a platform collapsing further along the line! But after changing platforms a number of times, having to get 2 trains to make the 15 min journey we finally arrived 20 minutes late just in time for our group to be called up to collect our award! Then we indulged in the lovely food provided (the yummy choux pastrys filled with strawberries and cream were my fav), beamed over our award some more before setting off for home! It was a lovely evening and I was so proud to be a part of it!
I also wanted to post some of the felt that my daughter and me have been making. We are doing a six week felt making course at my daughters school as part of their family learning programe. So far we have made pre-felt, thick felt and felted around stones to create a ball that was then slit open to make a flower. I am really enjoying it but have promised myself that I CAN NOT take on another hobby that will cost me money!!!


Thanks for looking,
Sami x




7 comments:

Crafting Queen said...

Congratulations on your award, sounds like it's a great group. Love the felting!

Unknown said...

Congratulations.
The felting looks good, and since I've been doing some recently I can say that as a hobby it is great...go for it!

laurie said...

congrats on your award. a sense of community is one of the important ingredients to a healthy and happy life! i have been very interested in felting lately but, like you, i don't need another hobby!

Teresa said...

Well done Sam you derserved the award you have all worked hard. The felting is brilliant, I can't wait to have a go with my soap and bubble wrap. I will probably just get very messy.

Lorraine said...

well done on the award..felt flower looks great..I find wet felting really hard work so prefer my embellisher and needle felting..what a great idea to have it at the school wish my sons school had such a thing but they dont like you going in!!!

Paige said...

Well done you clefver ladies!!! I know how much blood sweat and terars you put into those groups Sami and just how much those lovely ladies mean to you. I so pleased you go tthat award!!! You felting looks great but you are quite right!!!! not time, room or pennies for a new hobby ;) come around anytime and i'll show you how to make those flowers :)

Carmen said...

Oh what a brilliant thing to read :D Congratulations to you all Sam!

And am going to say that felting looks lush but am quickly going to close my eyes and go lalalala! So I don't get tempted to try!