Premature Menopause – UK National Conference

Months of planning came to fruition on Saturday (18^th June 2011) with The Daisy Network’s 16^th Annual Conference.

The Conference is our Charity’s only national event, welcoming members from across the UK to hear the latest on managing premature menopause.  With a cracking line-up, including Nick Panay on health, Dr Beth Cartwright on research and Clare Grogan on adoption, the event attracted a record number of delegates with the room packed to bursting.

I was responsible for the delegate bag contents, online event management and securing an adoption speaker.  I have to confess, adding Clare Grogan, patron of BAAF, to our agenda has to be one of my proudest career moments!

Online registration helped members get tickets quickly and conveniently, and e-marketing ensured the full membership and online community knew about the event.  The goody bag was well served with a number of organisations contributing products to our Charity:

Nurture Replenish

Alpro

Green Spirit

Graze

Sylk

Vitabiotics

I found Nick Panay’s talk fantastic.  Treatments and best practice are developing continuously; The Daisy Network delivered in bringing the country foremost specialist medic to us.  My favourite was certainly Clare Grogan.  Clare was heartfelt and candid about the circumstances that led her to adoption, and passionate when expressing her love for her daughter.  The connect with the audience was direct, brining tears to eyes.

Feedback from the event has been fantastic, and I’m already thinking about the next one.  If you would like to support The Daisy Network, the UK’s only national peer support group for girls and young women with premature ovarian failure, please contact me.

Money Management

I really benefitted from the Forward Ladies half-day training I went on last week; “Your Money and How to Hang on To It”. 

The trainer was financial planning expert Flora Maudsley-Barton of Parsonage Group supported  by Amanda Turpin of Mitchell Charlesworth - and I now know what I ‘m doing about my tax return! 

This dry subject was lifted by Flora encouraging all us trainees to share life and business objectives, reminding us to tie our financial aspirations closely to them.  Amongst Forward Ladies trust emerges and we were all candid.  We know money is not an end in itself, but it was good to have an expert tell us!

From that strong start, the course went on to illuminate financial records, bookkeeping and basic tax allowances.  We laughed together at our foibles and errors – at least we can now nip them in the bud!  Valuable tips on how to keep the admin part of our efforts as straightforward as possible have already freed up time for me to write this! The investment and planning advice from Flora was great.  I don’t know about you but my foresight is often blinded by a pea-soup of financial terminology and figures.

This training will be repeated in September – and I can’t recommend it enough.