President's Report

Tena Kotou, tena Kotou, tena koto katoa
Nga mihi nui kia kotou katoa….

Good afternoon everyone,

So here we are at the end of another year…. and remember that for this particular AGM we’re looking back on 14 months (rather than a year) because of constitutional changes that went through last June. Thank you for making the effort to be here, it’s wonderful to be part of such a positive vibe celebrating our year together at U3A Godley. This year has been another good one across the board and in my opinion U3A Godley is in a really good place. I believe the main reason for that, is the ongoing goodwill and support from our members.

As president I get a lot of positive feedback about how good our programme is – I totally agree. I know the programme committee tries hard to keep talks varied with something for everyone. As the old maxim goes…you can keep some of the people happy some of the time but you just can’t keep everyone happy all of the time…. and it can be quite challenging selecting speakers for such a wide interest range but, I think we hold a pretty good average. Trish Holden and the Programme Committee really think ‘out of the square’ to make the programme interesting, relevant and wide enough for as many people as possible to engage in. This 14 months we had 33 different speakers, 30 of whom were local, with quite a few from the University of Canterbury. We’re very lucky to have access to that resource …. but there’s a lot of other facility in and around Christchurch, it’s an interesting place and we live in interesting times.

I’m not going to list all the topics we covered this year but to illustrate the diversity I’m talking about here are some examples of the range of subject material we covered:
• black holes in space – a little over my head but certainly not everyone’s….
• mountain adventures and restoring backcountry huts – right up my alley…
• Francis Yapp from the University of Canterbury had us singing – loved it
• We had a whole series on international politics – loved it
• a really interesting talk on drug addiction – fascinating…..
• and towards the end of last year we heard about a little behind the scenes stuff of the NZ political scene from proud Catholic boy Chris Finlayson - you can’t get much more variety than that!

Interest groups continue to thrive – I’d love to join the cycling group but the days don’t work for me, Art Appreciation has been well planned and delivered, French Chat’s a new one and a few more members would be good. Recorder, Armchair Travellers, Book Discussion, Movies, Walking – all continue but there’s always space for a new idea if you’d like to initiate something.

Places of Interest has taken on a life of its own with there being 5 trips this year. A Places of Interest trip that I particularly enjoyed was the Behind-the Scenes look in the Chch Art Gallery – I was very taken with the demonstration of regilding of that huge and ornate frame around Van der Velden's painting of The Dutch Funeral…(it was on display to the public just recently)
A big thank you to Richard and Lyn Pickering for all the trips they organised and thank you to all the interest group leaders across the board for their continued enthusiasm and commitment to keep interest area areas operating…..

Thank you also to the Technology team – always quietly up the back setting things up before we get there and quickly fixing any issues that may happen during a session. Steph Coster and her helpers in the kitchen also continue to look after us, week after week – those catered morning teas have become something we all look forward to and the little touches of Easter and the Christmas with the Hot Cross buns, Easter eggs and Christmas cake are unique and special – thank you to Steph and her team.

The Website: I am very happy with it and I know you’re using it because we are able to see how many ‘hits’ the website gets, for example, when a new newsletter is put up it tells us how many times it’s been opened. It is really good to see, technology can be a challenge to many of our generation who never had to use it eg. their work, so well done – I’ve been quite surprised and very impressed with your technological expertise!

So how are things are looking for U3A Godley in the immediate future?

You know we’ve got a new updated constitution now and in putting that together we were very lucky to be guided by the thorough and meticulous hand of Ross Nicholas – thank you Ross. Again…ongoing support from members.

Financially we’re running about the same as last year. I was pleased we were able to keep the increase in fees to just $5 pp. Because we rearranged the end dates so that the groups’ activities align with the finances, this AGM represents 14 months as opposed to 12. It was logical to expect the Statement of Financial Position as at 31st December 2025 to show a small decrease from the previous year’s report.

Membership has increased. Year on year we see a small but steady increase in membership and 2025 has been no exception with membership now standing at 272. This year we welcomed 30 new members, including 2 who had left in recent years but came back. There are usually a few resignations along the way, mainly due to ill health or moving away, and this year we received 21 resignations. Sadly during the year 7 of our members passed away but I guess with our being a community of ‘seniors’ that is always going to be the case. We have chosen not to restrict numbers so we can welcome anyone who wants to join, and we’ll continue to do so as long as there is room for everyone in our venue

Every week we keep a count of how many attend and this year our average attendance has also increased – records over the last five or six years show it as a steady 140s-ish most weeks but for 2025 the average weekly attendance number has been 158 – obviously sometimes less and sometimes more – when we had Chris Finlayson speaking, we had 181. At the end of the year before 193 came to hear Joe Bennett, and he was he wonderful…..

The committee next year will be more or less the same with just one new member to replace Pam Austen, Leah Callaghan. Welcome Leah, and you will have noticed that Leah’s sister Emma works alongside Leah at the front desk – thank you Emma.

We have an excellent committee at U3A Godley – everyone has their own responsibility, and they just get on with it. They do a great job and I often feel very lucky that they are as good as they are – thank you to everyone of them.

So to sum up, we’re all about learning……the committee and I will provide the opportunity………………you keep coming as long as you possibly can………………and that means we can all continue to be ‘open for business’ so to speak and that’s what we’re all about.

Ko te manu e kai ana i te miro…… nōna te ngahere
ko te manu e kai ana i te mātauranga……..nōna te ao

(The bird that partakes of the miro berry owns the forest, the bird that partakes of education owns the world)

Helen Vear
9 March 2026