The president Daphne Evans welcomed everyone to this meeting and introduced our speakers for the evening, seven members of Monmouth's Repair Café. We were addressed by the Chair, Gerry, who explained that the idea of the Repair Café was first formed in the Netherlands in 2009 and quickly spread across the globe. The idea was to stop things being thrown away that could actually be repaired and saved from landfill, so helping the environment and saving money. There are now 140 repair cafes with 1000 volunteers in Wales. The information on items repaired are sent to the Welsh Government and it’s estimated that since the start, the CO2 saved would be the equivalent of 11.2 million miles worth of emissions in car journeys.

Monmouth’s café meets on the third Sunday of each month, from 2 to 4pm at Rockfield Community Centre. As well as repairing items, it is also a very social occasion with tea, coffee and cake available. The café repaired 168 items last year or gave advice on how to repair things.

As this is “Fix It February”, it was a very appropriate time to visit Wyesham WI. A variety of items were brought in for repair by members: a stool, a ceramic jug, a radio, a compact, a teddy bear, weighing scales and an electric fan. They were all either repaired on the night, taken away to finish repairing (the teddy) or advice given on how to repair the item at home. Gay Rogers gave the vote of thanks and all agreed it had been a really interesting and enjoyable evening.

Wyesham WI entered a team for the very first time into the Gwent WI Quoits competition at Goytre on 22nd January, where 12 Gwent teams took part. Daphne was very pleased to announce that Wyesham was the winning team. Well done to Jackie, Jane F, Jane L and Jayne (in the photo). In fact Jane Laurie announced that we have bought a set of our own quoits to use later in the year and in the future.

A team will attend the Gwent quiz on Friday 20th March in Usk and two members will represent Wyesham in the Gwent AGM on 25th April.Our table top sale will take place on 16th May.

Next month's meeting will be Monday 9th March at 7pm in St James Community Hall, new members always welcome.