New Administrator!!!!

Hi Everyone,

My name is Emma Land and I work with Meath Partnership. Some of you may know me from the posters from SWIFT. I will be looking after the SWIFT website when Aoife finishes up today . If anyone has any news items or events they would like me to put up on the website please feel free to contact me on my email address: emma@mite.ie. I will also be ckecking out the chat forum and if I see anything that I think Meath Partnership would be able to help out with, I'll add to the topic.

Hi Emma,

I totally like your style, Aoife most definitely rocks!! Please except this reply as a welcome from all the Swift ladies but be warned we can be pretty tough to handle!! I'm only messing, we are pussy cats really except for one thing, Aoife and all the tutors have turned us desperate housewives into organised, committed and even more intelligent superwomen.

Alot of the Swifties are meeting up for a tasty nosh-up on this Thursday (Jan 17) at 7.30pm in the Naper Arms Hotel in Oldcastle. So far seventeen ladies confirmed with the chance of more confirming on or before the evening itself. Emma you are very welcome to come along if you fancy a fun meet and greet with us, but please watch out we might lead you astray!!

During this action packed night out we hope to fit in some discussions about further training and workshops that we might like to attend. God knows what we will come up with because after the vino anything come be mentioned!!

Kind regards,

The most desperate swift housewife of all,

Mary C

Hi Mary, its lovely to talk to you. Hopefully all the other SWIFT ladies will not be too shy to respond to my first post. Thank you very much for the invite for Thursday, unfortunately I have some retail therapy in Blanchardstown already lined up so I won't be able to make it!!! Let me know how you all get on though, I would be really interested in finding out more about the type of training you would like to get involved in.

Greetings Emma

Finally someone to chat with, alot of my fellow Swift ladies have been experiencing technical difficulties with the forum but I notice the gremlins are disappearing and we should soon enjoy alot of fun and banter among us all!!

It's a shame you cannot attend our first extravaganza but if the meal works out, we hope to organise another outing in a few months time, I hope you enjoy the retail therapy that Blanchardstown has to offer, it's an amazing shopping centre, you will have to fill us in especially if there is any bargains!!

I spoke to Jennifer today, she was so helpful concerning where we stand as a group and about accessing future funding for training. We all hope to discuss what our immediate training plans will be for our share of the €2,500 aka €1,250. At the moment most people seem interested in organic gardening, digital photography and advanced computers or ECDL. I am waiting for Jackie Breen to get back to me about the latter, it would be great if we could make the most of our share as I am guessing it won't go far.

I know that Meath VEC fund 70% of the cost of computer and digital photography classes so fingers crossed our share will help cover the 30% and still leave monies for the organic gardening. This meal could end up in a food fight!! Hopefully we can all compromise and cover everyone's needs as well.

After this funding is used, where can we access further funding before September, 2008. Jennifer mentioned that the Leader funding wouldn't be available until then and does this funding cover training and further education. Jennifer also mentioned that we would need to structure our group in a professional manner ie, revenue commissioners, bank account etc.. in order to apply for the Leader funding. Emma if the group decide not to do this can we access funding from another source without all this paperwork or is there no way out of this avenue. One idea was to access Meath VEC funding and members interested in their courses would have to pay the 30% themselves, the only problem with this is that this might not be cost effective for some and it narrows down the options available.

I enjoyed the Swift programme because it offered great choice, do you know what Meath VEC have on offer in our area for the coming year. I tried to contact Shauna O'Reilly today but she is on leave at the moment. Emma what best advice could you give our group in what next steps we should take. All advice and support would be very much appreciated.

Right I'm off to tackle my unruly children.

Regards,

Mary C

Hi emma wishing you all the best

we promise to be good as gold, hope moya made contact with you or jennifer re kells women,s network open evening next wednesday

cheers lill