Our third Annual Meeting* concluded with an informative talk by Caroline Gray, from NatWest Bank. Her role as Community Banker includes awareness raising of the various scams criminals use to extract a cool £5-6 billion pounds per year from the public. Only 5% of these get reported to the authorities because victims are embarrassed about what happened. Her role is part of the Friends Against Scams initiative, which aims to raise awareness, increase the percentage of crimes reported and ultimately reduce the amount of money taken. Caroline took us through a number of different scams so we're better equipped to spot them. You'll find a similar Scam Alert list on the Friends Against Scams website.
In a separate post I've put together a quick reference guide to help you spot scammers and what to do, together with some of Caroline's top tips from the evening,
Elsewhere this month the Book Club reviewed Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain and for them it didn't match the praise in the reviews. The Crafty Crew got to grips with macrame and the Theatre Group enjoyed CLOGS performance of Blitz! at the Neeld Hall. The Creative Writers had a host of different themes to explore and turned their thoughts towards entering some competitions. The AmDram group had a preliminary look at a possible next production and have commissioned the creative writers to take it forward. Finally the Flexi Group returned to Allington Farm for another coffee.
* = Sally was re-elected as President and a new committee of 8 will take Pewsham Belles into its fourth year. More on that to come.