April has melted away…like chocolate in the recent hot weather.

March was a busy time for me, with 3 SRP commitments in 3 weeks. One was the Big Bang Science Fair supporting Outreach Committee and was the subject of last month’s blog. The other two were the Engagement Directorate Board on 5^th March and SRP Council on 20^th March. The Engagement Directorate Board is my board meeting of the chairs of committees in the Engagement Directorate along with the Affiliated Organisation and SRP Champions representatives. For the first time ever we had a face to face meeting (it is normally a teleconference) and took the opportunity to review the strategic action plan and ensure we understood what work the Engagement Directorate need to deliver as part of this. It was useful for the committee chairs to be able to speak to a representative from Strategic and Risk Review Committee (STARR) to query and understand the intention behind the strategic action plan, with the opportunity to change and improve them - the photo on the left is from this meeting.

The output of the Engagement Directorate Board goes up to SRP Council and I have to present any issues and successes from the Directorate to Council, to facilitate high level decisions. At Council we discuss key issues (which you can read about here in the summary minutes on MySRP) and make strategic decisions about the running of the Society. We are a diverse group and, as Trustees of SRP, are legally responsible for the Society and delivering its charitable aims. The Annual Trustees’ Report gives a good overview of our activities and outputs and can be found here.

At Council there are actions (many, many actions) and some of them are on individuals, with others on the directorates. I didn’t do too badly this time – I only got one new action, which I have quickly completed along with three existing ones.

One of the actions was to do with the SRP mentoring scheme, which is run by RGG – we are still looking for more members to volunteer as mentors and to encourage requests from mentees to match up. If you are interested then look at our mentoring procedure and get in touch with our admin team on admin@srp-uk.org.

The SRP Annual Conference is fast approaching and Events Committee has been hard at work finalising last minute details (i.e. which delegate bags should we get), while at my work we are deciding how to get there. There are a few of us, and current options are the train or driving. The train could be up to 4 changes and I think we will be opting for driving for a couple of reasons; to reduce the stress of potentially missing a connection and so we don’t lose anyone on the journey! It is a long way to drive but we will be in control of our own destiny. There are still tickets for the conference available and if you want to attend email charlene.cartwright@srp-uk.org.

The Annual General Meeting takes place during the conference and lasts about an hour, late Tuesday afternoon, and is when Amber will hand over as President (including the presidential medal) to Pete Bryant (currently President-Elect). We also review the accounts and share SRP’s financial position with you our members and agree any changes to subscription rates.

It was Easter this month and in Cumbria our School holidays were at the beginning of April so Mr H, the girls and I went away with Grandad. We had a blast at Centre Parcs near Milton Keynes, although at one point it hailed while we were riding back to the Lodge. Plenty of swimming and sport, including me doing pilates, Mr H doing the leap of faith, the 8 year old being a mermaid and the 4 year old driving a jeep. Here are some photos - thankfully no one took any of my pilates session.

We had a second Easter holiday over the bank holiday weekend – camping in Cumbria (no it didn’t rain and no it wasn’t cold – but I did prepare for both eventualities). We were only 35 minutes away from home but we were in a tent and doing something different.

I hope you all had a chocolatey Easter and enjoy what is left of the delightful spring weather.

You can get in touch on the usual details.

Jennifer Humphries

SRP Director of Engagement

Twitter - @jenkhumphries

Email - engagement@srp-uk.org