Network MESH AGM and annual review of activities

Minutes of 2006 AGM and annual review

Annual General Meeting of Network MESH (West London)
Registered Charity (Number 1099950)

Annual General Meeting of Network MESH (West London)
Registered Charity (Number 1099950)

To be held on Tuesday 3rd October 2006 at Ealing Centre for Independent Living,
1 Bayham Road, West Ealing, W13 0TQ at 2.00 pm.


1. Welcome by the Chairman

2. Apologies for absence
Dinah Miller, Carolyn Appleby and Mark Yabsley send their apologies.

3. Minutes of the last meeting
To be approved.

4. Election of officers and committee members
Under the terms of the constitution of Network MESH (West London) all officers and committee members are obliged to retire each year at the time of the AGM and stand for re-election if they so wish. Any member of Network MESH can propose themselves as a committee member, provided they complete the necessary nomination form and are seconded in writing by another member of the group. Nomination forms are distributed with the June newsletter and completed forms must be received by the Committee Secretary by the date on the form, approximately one month before the date of the AGM.

Completed nomination forms have been received from all but one of the existing committee members and from one member of the group who is not already a committee member (though he was co-opted onto the committee during the year). They are: for the posts of chairman and treasurer, myself, Tony Golding; for the post of committee secretary, Judy Mason; and for the post of membership secretary, Martin Sondergaard. The other committee members who have been proposed and seconded are: Catriona Courtier, Janet Freeman, Colin Parratt, Mark Yabsley, Megan Arroll and Alex Duffie. Dinah Miller decided she did not wish to be nominated again this year, after many years’ service to the group as one of those who built it up from small beginnings in the early 1990s. We are most grateful to her for her valuable contribution to Network MESH over a long period. As the election of officers was uncontested and the number of committee members/ trustees nominated is under the maximum permitted by the constitution of 10, I declare that all the above are duly appointed to serve as committee members/ trustees of Network MESH (West London) until the next AGM.

5. Chairman’s review of the year
This has been a busy year for Network MESH. Mostly, the things that have happened have been positive but we have also encountered difficulties. Membership continues to grow and is now up to 180, over half of whom are on email, which makes it easier to keep in touch. Finances are healthy. (If anyone is interested, copies of the accounts are available). Partly because we spent less than intended on OutReach, our newsletter – for reasons that are generally known - and partly because we received a very generous anonymous donation of £10,000 in November, we decided not to ask members for subscriptions this year. We spent a lot of time thinking how best to spend the anonymous gift, which had no strings attached, and came to the conclusion that half should be allocated to biomedical research into ME/CFS and half should be spent in ways that would directly benefit the membership---though, as yet, we haven’t quite decided how this will be done. The one thing we have done is allocate £500 to THAT Fund, a fund set up several years ago by the group to provide small grants to members in real need.

Very sadly, Catriona decided early this year that her health did not permit to continue as newsletter editor. With help from Judy and Megan she did manage to produce two issues and, in the summer, Katie Moudry edited a further issue to tide us over until we found a new editor. So, instead of the usual four issues a year, we only produced three. Thankfully, we are now back on track with a new editor, Sally Balfe, who is working hard to produce the first issue of her newsletter, which should be out by the end of this month. As usual, thanks are due to Martin for organising the address labels and Colin for doing the distribution. Thanks also to Krystyna for running our library.

For all sorts of reasons – mostly lack of available energy on the part of the committee and the few others who run the group – we held fewer meetings than usual. We had hoped to hold a New Year Party, along the lines of the successful one the year before, but it just didn’t happen. We did, however, hold a Summer Party in July, which everyone seemed to enjoy. I am sad to report that the Art Group, which met monthly for several years, no longer functions. This year, we have a New Year Party planned and also a Summer Party plus, we hope, a few other meetings.

One positive development was the setting up early this year of an adult ME/CFS clinic in Hillingdon, staffed by a part-time GP, physiotherapist, occupational therapist and clinical health psychologist. It is now up and running on a modest scale and seeing patients, essentially the newly diagnosed. We are in the process – at their suggestion – of fixing up a meeting with two of those who run the service to see how it’s going and how we can help. As we all know, there is no real treatment for ME but it must be a step forward to have a group of people in the NHS dedicated to understanding more about ME and doing their best to help sufferers cope with the illness.

The most exciting thing to happen during the year was undoubtedly our involvement with a significant biomedical research project into ME being conducted by Professor Puri at Hammersmith Hospital. Two of our committee members are directly involved in that project: Megan Arroll and Alex Duffie. As part of her Ph.D, Megan is working alongside Professor Puri and his team, while Alex has done a magnificent job of raising money to fund a portion of the project (most of the funding for this research has come from ME Research UK, which used to be known as MERGE). Alex has set up his own charity specifically to raise funds for ME research but the money has, for various reasons, been channelled through Network MESH, while the group itself has contributed half of the anonymous donation I mentioned earlier. This is a large-scale, three year project that makes use of the highly advanced imaging equipment available at Hammersmith. Let’s hope the results, when they are published, will point towards the way – or ways – in which the brains of people with ME differ from the population at large and the terrible problems that this causes us.

If anyone has any questions we will do our best to answer them.