Nearly 40 members of the Quantock Centre have volunteered to help organise and run the Centre's future activities, following the “Urgently Required: Your Help” appeal in Newsletter 74 three months ago.
Most of them offered their help when they attended a special meeting at the Somerset College of Art and Technology (SCAT) in November. Others could not attend, but offered help by letter and phone.
The meeting was held in order to recruit active support so that the Centre can continue to provide the wide range and quality of activities members have come to expect.
The Committee is now working out how best to harness the volunteers' offers. Meanwhile, acting Chairman Derek Spackman has written to thank them for “helping to make the future of the Centre more secure”. He said: “We are determined to build on the momentum and goodwill generated at the SCAT meeting.”
The problems facing the Centre, following the retirement of the Chairman, David Bastable, who moved to London in September, were spelt out in a presentation at the SCAT meeting by Morley Sage, who temporarily took over David's role as Chairman of the Programme Sub-Committee.
He explained that the burden of much of the work done by David could not be carried by existing committees unless more individuals were “prepared to give some of their time to help in whatever way they can”.
He added: “We can continue to be a successful Centre if the various tasks can be broken down into relatively small items, but this needs volunteers to carry them out.”
The main needs were for people to
| Plan and organise a visit by going to a place, seeing what is involved and how the visit should be conducted. | |
| Lead visits. | |
| Help with the administration and organisation of visits and lectures. | |
| Provide ideas. | |
| Look after the applications for events, as Booking Secretaries. |
Morley Sage concluded: “Without volunteers to take on some of the tasks, the Centre may well become but a shadow of itself. With volunteers we can be successful. It really is up to you whether we sink or swim!”
Ian Billinge, who has now taken over the Chairmanship of the Programme Sub-Committee, explained how visits and other events are organised, from the initial ideas right through the “nuts-and-bolts” of running them to their (usually) successful conclusion.
A Study day for Quantock Centre members at Dunster Castle in November has inspired a £1,000 donation from the Centre to help the National Trust install equipment for recording and showing the lives of rare bats at the Castle. Between May and October, Lesser Horseshoe bats make their home in the roof space above the shop where there is a nursery roost. A camera and microphone are being installed in time for this year's breeding season. A monitor, joy stick and a sound box, linked to the microphone, will be located in the shop to give visitors a fascinating insight into the lives of the bats – among the smallest in Britain. The Property Administrator at Dunster Castle, Stephen Hayes, in a thank-you letter to Centre Treasurer Eric Franks, said the “amazing donations” from the Centre and also from the West Somerset NT Association had given him leverage to bid successfully for matched funding from the Exmoor National Park's Sustainable Development Fund. “This means we have all the funding in place for the project,” he said.
The Lesser Horseshoe is one of the smallest British bats. It wraps its wings around its body as it hangs upside down. Its generic name, Rhinolophus, derives from the Greek for “nose crest”; its specific name, hipposideros, from the Greek for “horse-iron” or horseshoe. This name refers to the complex nose-leaf, thought to act as an “acoustic lens”, focusing echolocation pulses that are emitted from the nose.