Submitted to the PROBUS Global Newsletter, Spring 2022.

What outstanding thing/s has/have your club done to keep your PROBUS club "alive" during COVID? 

Our Probus Club is located in a rural community with a population of just over 4000. Since the outbreak of Covid and lock-down we rapidly set up a regular series of Probus Newsletters, initially weekly and then fortnightly to ensure regular contact with our members. We also kept regular telephone contact particularly with those who were more ‘socially isolated’ and especially those living alone and/or with more limited health.  The feedback about the Newsletters has been excellent, many members providing articles about their earlier times, desert-island-discs and stories of interest/amusement. We re-organised our regular speaker-programme to enable sharing Zoom presentations instead of face-to-face which proved popular. We were conscious though of those of our members who do not have internet access so delivered paper-prints of the newsletters including notes of the speaker events. We were delighted to see an expansion of our lady members particularly. Although we have sadly had a number of our members pass away in the past two years our membership has increased by approximately 15%.

What should the club do when it can meet "normally" again?

Our Club has resumed ‘normal’ face-to-face meetings, subject to government Covid guidelines. As anticipated and understandably, some more vulnerable members were nervous about attending after long periods of isolation. However we continue to support those of our members who find it challenging to meet face-to-face in a group situation by visiting them individually at home and by telephone. We are pleased to see that some of our members who were initially reluctant to rejoin meetings in person have now done so.

Face-masks are optional under our government guidance and we ensure that social-distancing measures are available.

What are the future challenges for your Probus Club?

We are confident that our Probus Club will continue to thrive. Our members are always keen to encourage their friends and neighbours to consider joining our club, often initially as a guest. We maintain and try to expand good relationships with other local Probus Clubs and with other clubs and societies. Probus is seen locally as a good and welcoming group for retired people moving into Ellesmere who are looking to engage with the community with like-minded people.

Paul Goulbourne

Hon Secretary

Ellesmere (Shropshire) Probus Club, UK